Robert Mugabe, the founding father of Zimbabwe who ruled the country with an iron fist for more than three decades, has died, according to President Emmerson Mnangagwa. He was 95.
Rumors had swirled around the health of the ex-president, who spent months in a hospital in Singapore earlier this year. Details of what ailed him were a closely guarded secret.
About time. Was in Zim in 2000 when the schit was starting. His thugs killed my PH's best friend (Martin Olds) just a couple months before I got there. Later killed his mother.
Robert Mugabe, the founding father of Zimbabwe who ruled the country with an iron fist for more than three decades, has died, according to President Emmerson Mnangagwa. He was 95.
Rumors had swirled around the health of the ex-president, who spent months in a hospital in Singapore earlier this year. Details of what ailed him were a closely guarded secret.
About time. Was in Zim in 2000 when the schit was starting. His thugs killed my PH's best friend (Martin Olds) just a couple months before I got there. Later killed his mother.
Where were you, Steve? I was in Chinhoyi that year, and things were hot. It's the spot where Mugabe started the war, and the "war vets" were chopping up white farmers.
Robert Mugabe, the founding father of Zimbabwe who ruled the country with an iron fist for more than three decades, has died, according to President Emmerson Mnangagwa. He was 95.
Rumors had swirled around the health of the ex-president, who spent months in a hospital in Singapore earlier this year. Details of what ailed him were a closely guarded secret.
About time. Was in Zim in 2000 when the schit was starting. His thugs killed my PH's best friend (Martin Olds) just a couple months before I got there. Later killed his mother.
Where were you, Steve? I was in Chinhoyi that year, and things were hot. It's the spot where Mugabe started the war, and the "war vets" were chopping up white farmers.
We were all over. Spent about a week in Harare where my hunting buddies friend was a professor at the University. Got to meet some of the students and do a little lecture.
Then down to Masvingo and Great Zimbabwe (had it mostly to ourselves due to the situation).
Next was Nyamndlovu (with a side trip to West Nicholson) for hunting (two weeks). Nymandlovu was where Olds' was killed (shot a wart hog and reedbuck off his property). Shot a pig of a leopard the last night at a place called Shilo not far from there.
Then up to Vic Falls for a few days at the Vic Falls Hotel and back to Harare.
With all the troubles, we pretty much had the whole country to ourselves. I have to say, even the squatters on the ranches that we were hunting on were happy to see us (and our US dollars).
A "Jackson" could buy a lot of things in Harare, and was welcomed everywhere else I traveled. There are many advantages to traveling in black market economies!
Was even worse in 2006. Had the PH exchange a 20 for Zim so I could buy some hot sauce I liked at a grocery in Vic Falls. Literally handed me a foot tall stack of 50K bills. Got about a dozen bottles for that.
Have a 500T note from a few years later around some place.
Was even worse in 2006. Had the PH exchange a 20 for Zim so I could buy some hot sauce I liked at a grocery in Vic Falls. Literally handed me a foot tall stack of 50K bills. Got about a dozen bottles for that.
Have a 500T note from a few years later around some place.
Converting a US Dollar to a bale of Zim Dollars was cheaper than buying toilet paper...if you could find it in stores.
He was a real nasty one. In 1970, the country was Rhodesia. It was a legally white racist country and blacks were discriminated against. On the other hand it was a prosperous country and grew so much food that food was exported. It had a good health care system.
And there was a guy on my soccer team at Ga State University named Peter Makaya. Peter was from Rhodesia and he was a good soccer player and a good guy. And we would ask Peter what he was going to do after graduation, and he said "I will return to Zimbabwe and kill the white man." I never heard of Zimbabwe before. Peter said he didn't hate us, we were his team mates and Americans, he only hated the white man of "Zimbabwe." It turned out, Peter was from one of the few prosperous black families in the country, and his dad had sent him to college in Atlanta to keep him out of the revolution. It looked like a real nasty war was in the offing for Rhodesia.
The years went by, Mugabe took over Rhodesia without a massive civil war. I lost touch with Peter, it turned out, he never went back home, he got a Phd in History, and a law degree, and is a professor at Middle Georgia College.
Mugabe realized his dream of black rule in Zimbabwe, and he turned the country into a real s*** hole, as Trump would say. Farming collapsed, instead of exporting food, under Mugabe's rule, people starved to death. Medical care went to crap, and people today die like flies of AIDS and malaria. For an idea of the medical care, the President didn't die in Zimbabwe, when his medical crisis approached, he flew to Singapore to get good medical care.
