Zimbabwe: Sam Francis was right, of course.
03/18/2007
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Google News currently has over 800 news stories on the latest Zimbabwean atrocities, the brutal beatings of opposition leaders, against the background, as a writer in The Australian reminds us, of economic disaster:

“Zimbabwe has notched up a series of unenviable records. It has the world’s highest inflation and fastest-shrinking peacetime economy. Mugabe’s violent programme of farm seizures has turned the former breadbasket of southern Africa into a land of hunger with the lowest life expectancy anywhere – just 34 for women and 37 for men – and the highest percentage of orphans…An astonishing 3.4m Zimbabweans have left the country, 70% of the working population. “

(Starved and beaten, a nation cannot rise up - Christine Lamb March 18 2007)

Somewhere Sam Francis is growling “What Did We Expect” -as he put in a 2002 article. Sam was one of a handful engaged in skirmishes in Washington (the disparity of forces was such they could hardly be called battles) in the early 1970s attempting to gain a hearing for the point of view of Ian Smith, the leader of the then Rhodesia. Smith argued that the likes of Mugabe, the current Zimbabwean President, were not suitable to rule the country, then one of the most prosperous in Africa.

The forces of Political Corrctness won, of course, in no small measure by white self hate in the Northern Hemisphere, and hundreds of thousands of lives have been ruined as a result. Sam was right, conventional opinion wrong – although very unwilling to admit it. Unlike his opponents, Sam continued his interest in the unfortunate country.

So it is fitting that, as Zimbabwe reels to what some think might be the terminal crisis of Mugabe’s reign, Sam Francis will be honored next week at a Washington conference discussing his final book.

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