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Mugabe is not Amin - historian
Trevor Grundy
March 08, 2007

http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/viewinfo.cfm?linkcategoryid=4&linkid=9&id=3557

Extremist commentators who tell the world that every man, woman and child in Zimbabwe is in danger from an "unrelenting autocracy" controlled by President Robert Mugabe, who they often liken to Idi Amin or Adolf Hitler, are doing more harm than good, says a respected historian.

Delivering the first Swantz Lecture at the University of Helsinki, Professor Terence Ranger told academics: "Robert Mugabe is not Idi Amin. Yet some commentators have made even more extreme comparisons."

Giving a review of his work as an "expert" when it comes to clarifying the rights of some of the thousands of Zimbabweans seeking residence in the United Kingdom, Professor Ranger called on political commentators to be balanced when writing and talking about Zimbabwe.

"Zimbabwe is currently a country of unpredictable violence. Some women are in danger of rape; some teachers are in danger of assault; violence has been contracted out to war veterans and youth militia; lists of 'traitors' have been compiled; hundreds of thousands of people are sick, or suffering from AIDS, or in exile.

"But this is very different from maintaining that every Zimbabwean is in danger from an unrelenting autocracy."

Commenting on reports published in a leading British weekly paper which claimed that Zimbabwe's genocide is 10 times worse than Darfur's and more than twice as large as Rwanda's, Ranger declared: "This kind of exaggeration spoils the case of critics of Zimbabwe."

Apart from writing some of the most interpretative books ever published about Zimbabwe and its pre-colonial history, Professor Ranger (a former Professor Emeritus in Race Relations, University of Oxford) is Chairman of the Britain-Zimbabwe Society.

It has established a panel from its members consisting of academics with enough knowledge of Zimbabwe to act as "experts "in asylum appeals.

He told the academics gathered at Helsinki University on February 14 - "Between us we have written hundreds of assessments. The result is an extraordinary archive for future historians of the crisis of the 2000s."

He went on to explain that every time an asylum seeker presented an argument for staying in Britain, the Home Office made a counter narrative "de-constructing, disbelieving, distancing Britain from any ex-colonial activity."

While the Government condemns the Mugabe regime the Home Office claims Zimbabwe is a perfectly safe place for a 'failed' Zimbabwean asylum seeker.

One case involved a young girl gang raped by so called "war veterans" because her uncle supported the MDC. The Home Office accepted her credibility but refused her asylum, saying she did not fall within the terms of the UN's Convention relating to the status of refugees.

Moreover, said the Home Office letter, "the fact that you were not killed during this time causes the Secretary of State to believe that agents of Zanu (PF) have no interest in killing you."

Said Professor Ranger: "It is disheartening that a couple of years ago, the Home Office assessors denied young women asylum because they would not accept that war veterans and youth militia were government agents and today they deny young women asylum if they have not been abducted, raped or killed by ' brigands' empowered by the same."

Professor Ranger has an impeccable revolutionary track record. Deported by the Smith Regime in 1963, he became one of the few white academics who sided with black freedom fighters during the Second Chimurenga.

Like millions of others, he was ecstatic when Mugabe became the first black head of state in1980. He returned to Zimbabwe in that year and helped establish the Britain-Zimbabwe Society the following year.

He told academics in Finland that Gukurahundi posed a terrible problem for him and the society. "Our silence paralleled that of almost all other agencies concerned with Zimbabwe. Nevertheless, I became ashamed of it."

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