Zimbabwe and Equality

Well, there's this video of a Mugabe apologist who's on the NYC City Council. Instapundit had the link earlier, but I thought I'd chime in and add that to be frank, this guy doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground- but he illustrates the difficulties of effective post-colonial/post-revolutionary government quite nicely.

Mugabe is a dictatorial prick who blew what legacy he had by overthrowing the rule of law in Zimbabwe and rigging elections, crushing the opposition and generally turning Zimbabwe into a pit of despair. Whoever this guy is, he rails against Tutu and Mandela for 'allowing the whites to keep the land.' Fair enough. But when Mugabe started handing out the land willy-nilly to his supporters, his farming economy collapsed and now Zimbabwe can't feed itself.

Land re-distribution is a tricky thing and I don't think it's ever been done right in history. Ever. Usually it's code for massive famine and total societal chaos as we see in the case of Zimbabwe- yet, it's a hard line to tread. With 80-90% of the wealth in the hands of very few (and in the case of Africa, probably white people) how does one build a democracy with that fundamental inequality? How? The maddening thing is that seeking to redress the problem through quasi-socialist ideas of making everyone equal only makes everyone equally poor. Egalitarianism is somewhat necessary in a democratic society, true- but it's equality of opportunity, not as socialists usually make it, a materialist conception of equality. That's true opportunity: when everyone born at any given time or socio-economic status in a democratic society has an equal shot at moving up and being a success or being a failure.

Have we ever achieved that? I doubt it. But if we must work towards egalitarianism of some kind, I'd rather it be that. (And if you think about it- the idea cuts across race and gender divides as well. We'd want EVERYONE to have a fair shot. So that means socio-economic conditions in the inner cities or border towns would have to tackled and barriers to gender equality would have to be knocked down. Everyone wins.)

(Also, to be fair, the headline from HotAir said that the guy was saying that 'criticism of Mugabe is racist.' When watched, the guy just rants about Mugabe doing what Mandela and Tutu wouldn't and why that's why white people dig Mandela. I guess the implication is that criticism of Mugabe is racist, but its not said directly.)