Posted by
KsReaganite on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 12:09:13 AM
As I watch with horro the open and deliberate attack on innocent men and women in Zimbabwe whose only crime has been to yearn for freedom from a megalomanic tyrant, it is not lost on me how largely silent the mainstream civil scoiety has been. None of that outrage for sanctions and divestment that we saw in the 1980s when the culprit was the white minority government in South Africa or the 1970s when the culprit was the much gentler-by Mugabe's standards-white minority government of Zimbabwe (then called Rhodesia) itself. Why is it that when blacks brutalize blacks, our consciences fall silent? Is it because in the halls of the effiminate, French wine sipping, self declared enlightened Boston Brahmins, it is considered impolite to criticize certain groups, no matter who the victim is?
Thousands have been murdered, hundreds raped, entire villages burnt to the ground, and scores of children abducted...all because they dared to hope for freedom in the foulest land in southern Africa. And yet, largely thanks to the deafening silence of the liberal elite in Washington, more will in the hope, perhaps forlorn, that freedom will come to them in their lifetimes.
While the couplet was written perhaps for a beloved individual or Spirit, the words of the Persian-Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib capture the unto-death yearning for freedom in Zimbabwe very well.
It was not in my fate to meet my beloved;
Had I lived but longer, this would still be my only desire.
But to live on your promise is to make my life a lie,
Would I not have died of happiness had I trusted it?