BECAUSE I know we will never agree with each other in our general outlook of Afrika (at least in political matters), I know your reply was also (indirectly) directed at me, and so this reply from me shouldn’t surprise you.

You challenged Ras Marcus to explain to you why “ … the peasants still don’t have land, while many of the ruling elite have more farms than they have time to administer.”

There we go again …

Is that the only argument concerning land that you can dream up, or why don’t you ever address the causes behind the land crisis in your home country, generally? Are you telling me that your current landlords -- the British -- always had clean hands in Zimbabwe, or why have we never read anything criticizing the British, or at least Zimbabwean whites such as Ian Smith, (written) by you?

And how is it that “the country is starving”?? … You have a bad sense of history. You’re right that “…Zimbabwe used to feed the whole of SADC” because I have seen that 20 years ago, but you tend to forget that EVERY Afrikan economy -- (such as Zambia’s) -- had a period after independence when all was “rosy”, Zambia being no exception, either! When I started school at Bluegum Primary School (now called Nalituwe Primary school) in Livingstone in the 2nd half of the 70s, all school requirements such as books, pencils, other stationery, even uniforms (including school shoes) etc, were free; they used to be given to us for free. We used to have free picnics at the Musi-o-Tunya/”Victoria” Falls, go on excursions about twice a month to the Livingstone Museum, Maramba Cultural Village, even deep into the outlying “interior” to Mukuni Village etc.

… But that was another time, and those days are bygone! We now live in the present, facing the future. Living in the present, we need historical & political points of reference to which we can always point, in order to gauge just how far we have come and how far we can go …

The simple point I am making is that it is really, really unfair and illogical (of you) to still attempt to label anyone who applauds His Excellency President Mugabe as “… really, really sick and twisted …” Mugabe won the elections and except you can accept that more than half your fellow countrymen are SICK, you have no right to condemn others in such unkind terms. It is fair of Mugabe to question Tsvangirai’s intellectual capacity: simply because foolish talk denigrating Mugabe has been circulating and (almost) systematized about Mugabe in the West, despite the fact that Mugabe could easily be the best educated of all Afrikan presidents …

Now you are saying Kaunda has the “luxury of moral superiority”? Why? He didn’t just “bow out of the forces of democracy”; he lost the ’91 elections after being condemned by many frustrated Zambians as “cheating”, “evil”, “corrupt”, a “sell-out” etc … the same type of hype and frustration we’re seeing being vented out by a minority of short-sighted Zimbabweans now, or by you! I already (briefly) reasoned with you on such Kaunda matters, which are of course comparable to the current stigma in Zimbabwe.