From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe: political elites from the United States and Britain were instrumental in installing dictator Robert Mugabe as the head of Rhodesia's government, resulting in appalling blow back.

At the inaugural ceremony, Prime Minister Mugabe's call for reconciliation between blacks and whites came as a welcome surprise to those who had for years dismissed him as "a Marxist-terrorist trying to gain power through the barrel of a gun." ... The unexpected size of his majority gave Mugabe an unequivocal mandate.... All in all, the election and handover represented a triumph of democracy in the face of considerable external pressure.

--Andrew Young

President Carter's Ambassador

to the United Nations

The excerpted statement above by Andrew Young provides a small sampling of the outrageous commentary on Robert Mugabe's ascension to power in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in an essay penned by Young for Foreign Affairs' special report,

"America and the World, 1980." As President Jimmy Carter's emissary to Africa, Young played a pivotal role--along with Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, and other Carter administration officials--in enthroning Mugabe's terror regime and turning much of the Dark Continent into the nightmarish slaughterhouse of chaos and terror it has become.

Two years earlier, in 1978, Ambassador Andrew Young described Robert Mugabe in an interview with the Times of London.

"Does Mr. Mugabe strike you as a violent man?" the Times reporter asked. "Not at all, he's a very gentle man," Young replied. "In fact, one of the ironies of the whole struggle is that I can't imagine Joshua Nkomo, or Robert Mugabe, ever pulling the trigger on a gun to kill anyone. I doubt that they ever have."

AmbassadorYoung could barely contain his brimming admiration for the newest "liberator" of Africa's oppressed: "I find that I am fascinated by his intelligence, by his dedication. The only thing that frustrates me about Robert Mugabe is that he is so damned incorruptible."

Andrew Young knew better. During the 1970s, as Mugabe competed with his sometime ally and former mentor Joshua Nkomo for primacy in the "liberation" movement in Rhodesia, he proudly identified himself as a Maoist and proved himself one of the most ruthless terrorist leaders. His Chinese-sponsored ZANU-PF guerrillas, operating out of the neighboring communist regimes in Mozambique, Zambia, and Angola, terrorized black villages, and tortured and killed opponents.

This was all well known not only to Andrew Young but to other pillars in the American foreign policy establishment who were promoting Mugabe as the "gentle," "incorruptible" savior of Rhodesia. Foreign Affairs, from whence came Mr. Young's quote at the beginning of this article, is, of course, the house journal of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), arguably the most influential "brain trust" in the world. The council, of which Young was a prominent member, had promoted Mugabe in its literature and had hosted him as an honored speaker during his long terror campaign to take control of Rhodesia. David Rockefeller, chairman of the CFR during that period, called Mugabe a "very reasonable and charming person." Likewise, the New York Times, Washington Post, and virtually all the rest of the major print and broadcast media choir had persistently sung his praises, ignoring his well-documented record of atrocities against civilian men, women, and children--black and white.

But in the past few years, Mugabe's erstwhile supporters have been forced to acknowledge that he is the brutal communist dictator that his critics had exposed him as more than 30 years ago. He has bathed Zimbabwe in blood, turned it into a police state, and ruined what was previously one of the most prosperous economies in Africa. Finally, the former darling of the Liberal Establishment has been repudiated by virtually all except Communist China and his fellow African Marxist despots.

A Beacon Extinguished

How could Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, a thriving, vibrant, multi-cultural example of Western style civilization, once a shining beacon for Africa, have turned into hell on Earth?

Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from Great Britain came in 1965, only a few short decades after England's 1923 annexation of Southern Rhodesia from the South Africa Company. Under the UDI, Rhodesia pulled away from the Mother Crown rather than negotiate with Mugabe's terrorists, as it was being pressured to do by White Hall and the powerbrokers in London. Rhodesians were all too familiar with the chaos and tyranny that had befallen neighboring countries that had capitulated to such pressure. Rhodesian leader Ian Smith, a fighter pilot who was shot down over Italy during World War II while fighting for the Allies, stood up to the Maoist, Marxist, and Communist penetration in the region all by himself. This while the rest of the Western world, wounded from Vietnam and menaced by the old Soviet Union, sat idly by--or worse yet, helped the communist-backed terrorists.

Smith traveled to Washington, D.C., to ask for help. He wasn't asking for foreign aid; he merely hoped to persuade President Carter to call off the economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure being applied by the U.S. State Department, the UN, and Britain in an attempt to force Rhodesia to accept rule by the Mugabe/ Nkomo terrorist forces. Carter flatly refused to see Smith.

Henry Kissinger, meanwhile, did meet with Smith in Geneva. But if Smith thought that he would receive kinder treatment from the former secretary of state and adviser to Republican presidents, he was in for a rude awakening. Precisely what threats or pressures were brought against him is not known, but Smith, who had previously pledged not to surrender to the terrorists "in ten thousand years," was a changed man after the meeting. He is said to have aged 10 years in that one week in Geneva. It has been suggested by African observers that Smith was threatened with a military invasion of Rhodesia backed by the UN, the United States, and the U.K. That is entirely plausible, as such talk was in the air and detailed plans for a military invasion of South Africa had been drawn up and published by policy wonks at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.

Smith asked Kissinger about things like history, culture, civilization, and loyalty. After all, Rhodesia had fought for the West in the great battles of the 20th century, including World War II and the Korean War. Kissinger firmly told Smith something truly sad and even frightening, "I am afraid those things have no place in the modern world."

Kissinger added that "white regimes would not survive in Southern Africa." Ironically, it is a fact that at that time the black peoples of Southern Africa were voting with their feet and fleeing from the communist-Marxist regimes run by black revolutionary clients of Washington, Moscow, and Beijing to the "white regimes" of Rhodesia and South Africa. The New World Order and seeds of today's African mayhem were being firmly planted by the globalists at the Council on Foreign Relations and Britain's Royal Institute for International Affairs.

Under intense pressure from the Washington-Moscow-Beijing axis, South Africa, which had long fought for Rhodesia, cut off aid to Ian Smith's government, hoping their own apartheid system would be spared by the West for doing so. The sellout was on. Many Rhodesians, including legendary soldiers like Willem Ratte, Bert Sachse, and Luther Eeben Barlow, who would become the backbone of South Africa's elite special forces in the war in Angola against Cuba and the Soviet Union, fled to South Africa. The power vacuum created by that exodus would be filled by some of the most blood-thirsty savages Africa has ever seen.

Mugabe's Long Record

Contrary to Andrew Young's claims, Mugabe's record proves that he was (and is) indeed "a Marxist-terrorist trying to gain power through the barrel of a gun." And, contrary to popular misconceptions caused by decades of media disinformation, it was not Mugabe's thugs who ended white rule in Rhodesia. Ian Smith and the legitimate black leaders of Rhodesia accomplished that in 1979 in multi-racial elections that brought a black majority government to power under a former Nkomo/Mugabe comrade, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who had renounced violence to work for peaceful change.

Mugabe and Nkomo tried to stop the elections with threats, intimidation, and terror. Mugabe issued a "death list" of the black leaders who were cooperating for a peaceful transition to black rule, calling them "traitors," "opportunistic runningdogs," and "capitalist vultures." Nevertheless, 64 percent of Rhodesia's black population defied the threats and turned out to vote. And an overwhelming two-thirds of them voted for Abel Muzorewa, making him Rhodesia/Zimbabwe's first black prime minister. They were very much aware of the disasters brought about by communist-backed black dictatorships in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia, Ghana, and Namibia. They did not want "one man, one vote, one time," which had become the rule in Africa.

The 1979 election that elected Muzorewa and a new black majority parliament had met all the conditions demanded by the United States and Britain and was certified to be free and fair by outside observers. But the U.S. and British governments then reneged and demanded new elections that not only included Mugabe and Nkomo, but allowed their ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front) and ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People's Union) guerrillas back into the country as well. Believing it had no choice, Rhodesia capitulated to these outrageous demands. Following a campaign of intimidation and terror, Mugabe was "elected" in 1980, proving the African dictum that the man with the most guns and the most ruthless thugs wins.

As anti-communists had predicted, soon after coming to power Mugabe turned on his former terrorist comrade, Joshua Nkomo, who was of the minority Matabele tribe. To accomplish this, Mugabe brought in several hundred advisers from communist North Korea to train his infamous Fifth Brigade. Then he began his great Matabele Massacre. Mugabe's Mashona tribe (or "Shona" for short) had been long-standing rivals of the Matabele, but the two tribal groups had managed to coexist peacefully in white-ruled Rhodesia. Mugabe called his ethnic cleansing operation against Nkomo and the Matabele Gukurahundi, the Shona term for "the first rain that washes away the chaff of the last harvest before the advent of spring rains proper."

Bitter Harvest

Official figures vary, but it can be roughly estimated that around 30,000 Matabele were slaughtered in Mugabe's "liberation" of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. It was an ominous prelude to what would become a fascist, archetype Maoist revolution in Rhodesia, a country roughly the size of Montana. Mugabe, with the help of his own de facto Hitler Nazi Youth corps called the "Green Bombers," would go on to slaughter Zimbabwe's white farmers, take away their land, and plunge the nation into a hell hole of debt, hunger, hyperinflation, murder, HIV/Aids. and hopelessness.

Once the breadbasket of Southern Africa, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe was (and remains) home to one of the world's grandest sights, Victoria Falls. Called "the mist that thunders" by the locals, this natural wonder has (thus far) defied Mugabe's ability to ruin, corrupt, and destroy, but where abundant game and wildlife once brought tourists from the four corners of the planet, now conservationists worldwide have expressed alarm that Mugabe's policies have decimated the country's wildlife treasure, with many exotic species (including elephants and rhinos) facing extinction.

Apartheid never existed in Rhodesia and in general the races got along. The race wars were launched by Mugabe's ZANU-PF and Nkomo's ZAPU. All the while the American media cheered this sickening and deadly debacle. Even the farm invasions were lionized by the late Peter Jennings of ABC News. who in a nationally televised report made the ZANU-PF terrorists who were murderrag, torturing, and raping the ethno-European farmers out to be "war veterans" and heroes.

By all accounts, over 400,000 agricultural jobs have been lost. The Zimbabwean Commercial Farmers Union has issued numerous reports about the violence, law-breaking, and devastating effects of Mugabe's white land grab. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe's inflation is the world's highest; the government's own statistics put it at 4,500 percent annually, while some economists put it at double that. GNP, GDP, unemployment, real growth, household income, and other major economic indicators are collapsing by the day, as they have been for most of the past 10 years. As a result, all Zimbabweans no matter what their race, tribe, or culture are suffering.

Tobacco had accounted for 30 percent of exports with gold second at 11 percent. These days, heroin, mandrax, methamphetamines, and other drugs are emerging in a narco-economy. Basic services are all but unobtainable. Shelves are empty. The very best Zimbabweans have fled for the UK and beyond. Zimbabwe's infrastructure is decaying. Government corruption is endemic. The military has turned its back on all acceptable standards of humanity and soldiering.

It is estimated that only 100,000 Zimbabweans use the Internet in a country of about 12 million. Those who write the truth about what's going on in the country and use the Internet to reach the outside world are often hounded, harassed, and threatened by the government. Mugabe's main black opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), is feeling his wrath. MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa recently said over 200 MDC members were arrested by Mugabe's forces. MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has replaced Ian Smith, the white farmers, and the Matabele as the ZANU-PF's boogeyman du jour.

Cathy Buckle, author of Africa Tears ; and Beyond Tears, had her farm taken away by Mugabe during his land grab. She told this writer, "At first I supported change. But now just look at our country." In her latest report from inside Zimbabwe, Buckle offered hope by pointing out that overweight ZANU-PF leaders are having problems convincing their bone-thin followers that all is well in Zimbabwe. As in Ethiopia and most other African famines, the food shortages are man-made by communist, collectivist policies that are outright genocide.

What can the United States, the world's "sole, indispensable superpower," do? Apparently not very much. Secretary of State Condi Rice has noted "outposts of tyranny" from Burma to Venezuela to North Korea to Zimbabwe to Iran. (Outposts of course must have a main garrison home, and those homes are Russia and Mainland China.) President Bush, Jr. signed an Executive Order against Zimbabwe, citing it as an enemy of the United States. A travel ban on Zimbabwean officials has been enacted. But our good "trading partner," China, continues to shower aid on Mugabe's regime.

Clearly Zimbabwe can work. Rhodesia proved that. It was a model for a post-colonial, still-developing Africa. There should be an agricultural bounty, beyond tobacco. There's also coal, chromium ore, gold, nickel, copper, iron ore, vanadium, lithium, tin, and platinum ready to be mined.

As for the future, Mugabe is 83. It is rumored he has throat cancer. He is shunned by most on planet Earth, even the BBC, save for allies like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong I1, and the Chinese Politburo. Mugabe continues to practice yoga and still vacillates between his Spartan upbringing and new-found tastes for the good life. He has been known to use the state airline to assist his wife on her legendary if not ebulliently lavish shopping jaunts. Mugabe showed up at Thabo Mbeki's last South African presidential inauguration and was greeted as though he were a rock star. Zimbabwe's constitution allows for Mugabe to stay in power till he is 90 years of age, but Africa watchers from across the political spectrum are speculating that his tottering regime could implode before the year's end.

Will the truth about Zimbabwe ever become fully known and acted upon by all decent people in Africa, the West, and the rest of the world? As noted by actress Nicole Kidman in the film The Interpreter, which many believed to have been made as a psycho-social operation against Mugabe, "Even the faintest whisper can be heard above the sound of armies ... when it speaks the truth." Perhaps this article will serve as the faintest of whispers.

Anthony C. LoBaido, a journalist and filmmaker, has worked and traveled extensively in Africa over the last two decades.