Talk:Robert Mugabe/Archive 2

This is an archive of past discussions about Robert Mugabe. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Untitled

With respect to the comments above regarding voting in Zimbabwe, I do wonder what would happen if foreign inspectors observed US voting. You know, Russia has stated that US elections should be monitered by the UN because the US has too much power for its elections to be run wily-nily, I guess I agree with the Reds. Dietary Fiber

I've reembedded the image in the text. Not doing breaks a fundamental rule of graphic layout. Giving a picture entire column dominance when it size does not warrant it is POV - it is saying the image is of special importance that means it has to be noticed. Images should be used for illustration, not for editorial purposes, which is why no enclopædia, no publication, website or document seeking a NPOV would give a picture full column dominance. It just is not done.

Furthermore not embedding the image means that it has the freedom to shift, depending on the browser, and effect text wraps. restricting its movement means that it will stay exactly as placed, so you have a solid permanent page, not a shifting one. The last time I looked at it, its unembedded box was running into the browze commands, which made the page look amateurish and could well effect access to the page on other browzers.

Longterm however, this image is clearly POV and should be removed. It decontextualises the image, suggesting the contrary to the article's claims, Mugabe is generally welcomed worldwide. In fact, K. Annan reluctantly agreed to a quick photographs while other world leaders refused to meet him, refused to shake his hand or even appear in camera shot with him. Out of context this picture is ambiguously POV and should be removed. But if it stays (and I vote to ditch it has to be embedded or it would screw up text wraps, cause problems for some browsers and make the page look extremely amateurish, as though those who laid it out didn't know how to do it properly. STÓD/ÉÍRE 20:02 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

re DF comments. The events in Florida showed that US elections don't exactly confirm to proper democratic standards. So yes, I would have no problem with observers being sent it. But that is different to threatening to shoot journalists who publish stories critical of the regime, etc. They are of a fundamentally different scale. STÓD/ÉÍRE 20:02 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

I think the photo should stay, althought it should not be the only one and you are free to add that the Annan and Mugabe are not "friends". In fact, yesterday I remember thinking about how it looks like Annan doesnt want to be shaking his hand-in any case, its a good photo. Dietary Fiber

Jtdirl, here's what the image looked like for me in Mozilla 1.3 (Win2k) after your last edit:

File:Mugabe-temp div broken.jpg

And now after I removed the too-small "width: 270px" from the div:

File:Mugabe-temp div fixed.jpg

The image is 300 pixels wide, so 270px is not wide enough to include the picture within the borders. Without the manually specified width, the div expands to match the minimum width required by its contents, and the image does fit.

If you find anything wrong with the image display for you, please provide a screenshot which demonstrates the problem more clearly for those of us who don't have the exact system and browser that you do. --Brion 20:47 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks Brion for looking at it. I was trying to get onto Mozilla and other browsers to check it out and see if it needed any adaption. But I am very unhappy about giving the picture a full column when it itself isn't of a size to fill it, though it is nearly at such a size. We were always taught to avoid if at all possible giving an image larger column size than it needs, in particular if that involved leaving a lot of white space around. It was called by our lecturer the editorialisation of an image because it gave the image such prominence that what it contained was made part of the article rather than merely illustrating the text. We told to avoid such a problem at all costs, particularly if the image had any obvious or potentially subliminal meaning - as this one does because it suggests contrary to the evidence that Mugabe is a welcome participant on the world stage, whereas vast numbers of countries in Europe, America, Asia and even in Africa a world leader would not be caught dead with him in a photograph. So unless it is contextualised by pointing out that the UN General Secretary meets any world leader but that the UN stresses that does not mean acceptance of him or rejecting the general boycott if him the picture appears to contradict the article itself, and so gives an unqualified POV spin through the unexplained picture. We can NPOV the image simply by cropping out the UN General Secretary so that it simply features the person whom the article is about., Mugabe.

Any opposition to so cropping the image and seeing if it in its smaller size can then be indented in the text in the standard manner? STÓD/ÉÍRE 21:12 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

Now, I'm a rank amateur when it comes to graphic design, so I'm not very familiar with the jargon. Could you explain what you mean by "giving the picture a full column" versus "embedding", preferably with screenshots or direct links to revisions which exemplify these conditions? --Brion 21:17 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

Pope John XXIII (1958-1963)
EXAMPLE OF EMBEDDING IMAGE IN THE TEXT

Our text here is in one simple broad column, logically for something like this (unlike a newspaper, which may use eight narrow columns running down the page. By embedding I mean placing to one side so that the text wraps around it, as I have done here with an image of Pope John XXIII to the right. I did that for example in Michael Collins (Irish leader) and Papal Tiara where every image, if their size permitted it, was put to the left or right of the single column, with text wrapping around it. That allows you to illustrate the article, without a picture dominating it, which it does on the Mugabe page because it stands on its own, with its own massive white space. Normal standard style would place an image if it fits to the right side of the page, within the second paragraph text running around it or along side (though size might require paragraph one and two, or two and three.) Readers are used to being presented with that standardised layout in newspapers, encyclopædias, general publications. Where an image is so large it has to be given a central spot in a column (as in Mugabe on the article here), the standard approach would be to run it about two-thirds down the page, with a smaller image, embedded to the right surrounded by text, at the start. (See Pope Paul VI) Being seen as one a series of images can neutralise the dominance of a large image that takes up a full column (a full column here. A newspaper column would be much smaller - in that case they would be talking about an image that would be spread over several columns.)

How an image looks on a page can itself change the content, depending on its size in relation to the story. So if possible large block images should be avoided at the top of a page, with a smaller image located on the right, with text wrapping around it. Newspapers do often lead with a large multi-column image, but that it because the image is a news image, and so a key component of a story. Where we are simply using a face to say 'this is the person the article is about', a dominant primary image can be distracting. In the case of the Mugabe image, where it shows him meeting the UN General Secretary, that had a particular news angle that in the context of the article's contents, have a meaning that in the case of the contents of the article, if not explained in a caption, appears to conflict with what the article says.

The thing about using width here is that I have yet to find that if I leave it out I can control where the image appears on the page. It seems to automatically go to the centre, dominating thus the location. The caption also goes haywire unless I include a lot of <br>s. When putting images in I have deliberately gone into pages using a number of browsers to make sure an image fits OK in them all. (Mozilla seems to be the 'alkward' browser in this instance.) If one leaves out the width command, is there was way to guarantee the page will be able to be safely embedded in text with a text wrap, and with the caption working OK? But because the 'right hand' text wrap style in paragraph two is the standard one used, and the one the average reader is familiar with, it is what we should be aiming to achieve. When done well, it has given us pages on wiki that the Encyclopædia Brittanica, or indeed Newsweek, could take and use in terms of layout without change. As the standard look it should be the one we should replicate as much as possible when using image. Its familiarity makes it feel natural to a reader; putting the image on the left in paragraph 2 seems odd because it is not what we are used to. We should aim to readers naturally read an article rather than being stopped suddenly by a feeling that something about the page isn't quite right (ie, is different to what they are used to), it a picture because of size or location stopping them in their tracks or breaking their concentration when reading text. Pictures in encyclopædias should contextalise and vitualise the article, hence their location where possible in text, rather than 'stand alone'. STÓD/ÉÍRE 22:44 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

(sorry - the page was too long. I abandoned the entry and archived. And please don't think I am blaming Mav for anything. We may disagree on style re images, but that is all. We agree on wiki substance. STÓD/ÉÍRE 22:44 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

(You seem to be cut off here.) Well, under that definition I don't see any point at time since the addition of the photo to this article that it was anything other than "embedded". The things that have varied are:

Mav reduced the picture in size from a huge 450 pixels to a comfortable 300 px
It has been moved up and down by one paragraph a couple times
At some point the picture gained a thin border, which it retains
It briefly gained a horizontal rule between the image and its caption, which was quickly removed
At several points the div section has had a hardcoded width, either 450px for the 450px-wide image, or too-small 270px for the 300px image

I have yet to find a revision in which it was not right-aligned, allowing text to wrap around if there was room, and I certainly see no reason to blame such a thing on mav. --Brion 21:48 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

Thank you Brion! I think the problem here is with JT's browser. If that is the case then a great many images in Wikipedia will give similar results for JT because what I did is in fact the standard around here (I prefer tables to div tags though). If enough users are affected by this rendering problem then we may have to change Wikipedia:Boilerplate text to reflect this. --mav

I've checked the web server logs to see if I could get some concrete information. It seems that Jtdirl is using Internet Explorer 5.22 for Mac. (IE on Mac is particularly problematic, unfortunately; on my Mac at work I've given it up and switched to Netscape 7, which in addition to the lovliness that is tabbed browsing, treats Wikipedia well -- no more 32k text cutoff or weird table formatting problems.) Meanwhile, Internet Explorer 4.0 for Windows also seems to have problems with using div tags for right- or left-aligning images (see discussion on eo.wiki)]. (Yes, people still use it. Blecch!) An explicit width on the div's style does it, but this isn't automatic and needs to be changed if the image is resized (not to mention variances in width due to padding and border)... I wonder if we can work around this by putting explicit width and height attributes on the img tags; PHP comes with a function for checking the size of common file formats, so this shouldn't be hard to do. --Brion 23:59 Mar 30, 2003 (UTC)

I am all for whatever solution you can find, Brion. To be honest I have netscape 7 on my system but I never quite liked it. Maybe it was the fact that I originally had just had Explorer 5.22 when I bought this eMac in August, but I've ended up sticking with it and find netscape annoying. But if it is better to use and you recommend it, I'll bite my lip and use the dang thing. No more 32K cut offs! Way-hay! That's mean I can talk to Mav more often!!! (Jeez his page fills up quick, and will even more so now that 172 is back to give us his unique perspective.) This may be my last entry in Explorer 5.22 folks (*sob* *sob*) STÓD/ÉÍRE 00:17 Mar 31, 2003 (UTC) [I am downloading Netscape 7.02 as we speak!]

"Way-hay! That's mean I can talk to Mav more often!!!"

Oh great, now I'll have to do 4 archives a month! :-) --mav

I changed the heading "Marxism" to "Anti-Colonial Struggle" for two reasons. First, the former heading simply did not describe the contents of this sextion, which seems to be more about the politics of ZANLA and other organizations involved in the struggle, and not about Mugabe's use of Marxian thought, or his relationship to a Communist Party. The section refers to Mugabe as a "marxist" only once, and without discussion; indeed, later it suggests he is a nationalist (and Marxism and nationalism have at best a tense relationship). Second, given the lack of substantive discussion, I question the NPOV of the heading -- in the US and UK, the label "Marxist" is still a common way to discredit someone, especially national liberation/anti-colonial struggles. I realize "anti-colonial struggle" may not seem NPOV to some, either -- I chose this phrase because it is how ZANLA is described in academic literature. But if anyone thinks they have a better term, go ahead. In any case, if the header "Marxist" is reintroduced to the article, it shou

My god! You people are obsessing about a photo!

On my own PC I have saved pictures of him meeting with many different statesmen within the past year or two, like Chirac, Annan, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Mathamir Mohammed, India’s Prime Minister Vajpayee, President Mbeki of South Africa, then-President Moi of Kenya, and others.

Won’t some of you people just admit to being fixated with characterizing Mugabe as an international pariah? Bush, Blair and Howard are not the entirety of the international community, though some with that ever-invasive Rudyard Kiplingesque attitude certainly think that they are. He was received very warmly when he spoke before the summit of the 114-nation Non-Aligned Movement in Malaysia just recently.

The photo on the page is very recent, taken after his 79th birthday. It's fine. You people are being hypocritical. You’re calling me biased but you people want to find a less attractive picture of Mugabe because you don’t like him.

Do you have an image of just him so that can be the first image people see on this page? As it is, his face is a bit small and doesn't offer much detail. --mav

Totalitarianism is the extension of government control to all major aspects of social life, often in the pursuit of an overriding, ideological objective. In totalitarian societies only a single party operates; the state controls the thoughts and actions of every individual; and the state inculcates society with its ideology through mass rallies, the radio, newspapers, civic organizations, and other media. The party’s monopoly on power is enforced by the police, terror, and the total (hence TOTALitarianism) elimination of opposition.

Mugabe is not a totalitarian ruler. Once again, no totalitarian ruler runs in competitive elections that he can rig. Totalitarian rulers don’t harass organized opposition; there is no organized opposition and if anyone even contemplates there being organized opposition those goals will be swiftly thwarted. Totalitarian societies are far more organized and controlable than Zimbabwe. Authoritarianism is ancient, but totalitarianism is quite a new phenomenon (though it’s interesting to study the parallels of ancient Mayura India and Ch’in China to the totalitarian regimes of 20th century). Totalitarianism is a radical form of authoritarianism. They are not synonymous terms. To understand the contrasts, look at the huge difference between North Korea and Zimbabwe.

Find a political scientist who seriously calls him a totalitarian ruler. I’m sure that there a few; and I’m sure that a few crackpots have called George Bush a totalitarian ruler too. To them, this would not be a serious assessment of his countries political institutions, but a pejorative term.

I’m going to change “totalitarian” to “autocratic.”

172

I agree - "Authoritarianism" seems to be more appropriate here. ---mav

Do you people like these photos?

File:Mugabe (27).jpg

Below: Mugabe speaks before the summit of the 114-nation Non-Aligned Movement File:Mugabe (37).jpg

Below: Mugabe welcomed by an Honor Gaurd in Paris prior to meeting with French President Jacques Chirac in 2003.

File:Mugabe (44).jpg

I'd stick with the current one, though, since it features the front of his face.

Doesn't he look good for 79? --172

An image showing the front of his face would be best. If needed I can crop and edit the larger version of the image now in the article to serve as his mug shot. --mav

Don’t do that. If you can’t see the person with whom he’s meeting, he’d look ridiculous. You don’t want a picture of a big, blurry, grinning face.

172

Is this better?

File:Mugabe (22).jpg

I prefer the one with him meeting with Annan. You get a better sense of his age in that one. In the one above he looks 50.

The better picture will convey the "elder statesman." Also, why not two pictures in the article? They're two pictures or more in many articles.

172

A cropped version of the above would be fine as the main photo. The UN emblem would have to go though. --mav

How about this?

Include the one with him speaking before the Non-Aligned Movement at the bottom. Include the caption, “Mugabe, speaking before the 114-nation member Non-Aligned Movement of largely developing countries in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has increasingly become an activist on behalf of Third World concerns.”

UN emblem has to go? What is this, censorship? Come on. It’s important to know where he is. This obsession with characterizing him as an international pariah is just an example of Kiplingesque attitudes. As I’ve said before, the leaders of the white, English-speaking countries aren’t the international community even though they seem to believe that. He’s quite respected in the Third World.

172

I would object to an image of GW Bush in front of the same podium if that image were being used as the main one for George W. Bush. Why? Becasue GW is not part of the UN. I'm going to crop the image now (it's too big anyway). --mav

You did a good job, Mav. The caption is better than the excessively large photo.

172

To have an entire caption dedicated to the anti-homosexual campaign seems a bit off. A third of Zimbabwe's adult population is dying of AIDS and the economy is in shambles. It's not one of the biggest issues facing Zimbabwe, with a small number of homosexuals, but a reflection of our own society’s preoccupations. While it needs to be mentioned, it's not relatively significant enough to warrant an entire, separate caption.

Thus, I did not remove any information but just placed that part of the article dealing with social policies under the heading dealing with the rest of his presidential policies.

172

This entire paragraph has to be removed until it’s toned down. There is not a single fact in this paragraph; it’s nothing but a grossly non-NPOV anti-Mugabe tirade.

“Mugabe's international unpopularity in the 1990s and 2000s is, in many ways, in direct contrast to his popularity in the 1980s, when he was seen almost as a model African democrat, providing an example of good governance that could be copied in other African states. Yet ironically, as other states, notably South Africa, have moved into full democratic black majority rule, Zimbabwe has reverted from a stable, economically viable, well governed state to an increasingly dictatorial state under a leader perceived internationally as, at best, an autocrat who in the eyes of his critics at home and abroad has made a series of disastrous policy mistakes, augmented by corruption.”

For one, international unpopularity refers to the stances taken by most white white nations, especially the English-speaking white nations that were white settler colonies where an indigenous population was displaced, subjugated, and largely eradicated.

For this to remain, you people must be challenged to pick out a series of non-Western nations which have seen their relations with Zimbabwe deteriorate. And don’t just pick out Rwanda and Uganda, the two nations on opposing sides in the Congo civil war. What about China, Russia, India? What about France even? Chirac recently met with Mugabe.

The above article refers to “disastrous policy mistakes.” This is completely inappropriate. You people, led by Danny, refuse to accept any alternative viewpoints. Cite macroeconomic indicators; cite concrete examples of what you charge; cite concrete examples of Mugabe’s deteriorating relations with Western and non-Western nations and international organizations. In short, if you want to salvage the tirade make it factual.

This sentence was factual and it will remain in the article: “Many of the economic emigrants from Zimbabwe are now being enthusiastically sought by neighbouring states, notably Zambia and South Africa”. It was placed in an appropriate position in the part of the article dealing with the land reforms.

172

I've moved the picture of Mugabe at the Non Aligned Movement - an image is NEVER put under a footnote. The large explanatory text has been shorted and used as a caption. The full text in being used separate from the article was POVing it. If it belongs anywhere, it is in the text, not separate. I've removed it.

We do have a problem with the images. I like plenty of images, but not all the same. All we have are diplomatic images, some misleadingly captioned, ie they suggest that he is widely welcomed, which is not true. His address to the UN General Assembly is a right available to any leader. Saddam Hussein and Josef Stalin would be equally entitled to address the UN GA. Similarly every head of state is given an audience with the General Secretary. None of the images counteract the fact that he is unwelcome in much of the world. Even on his visit to France, Chirac welcomed him in a different manner to anyone else; no embraces, no long lingering photo-ops, merely a five second handshake so quick some photographers missed it (Chirac refused to 'redo' the pose, something world leaders invariably do again and again for photographers). We need other non-diplomatic images assocated with Mugabe. If we use the one in Malaysia, it needs cropping as it is too big. STÓD/ÉÍRE 20:51 Apr 1, 2003 (UTC)

Removed two seriously POV additions by 172. There is no such thing as Britain's Commonwealth of Nations. It ceased to be Britain's decades ago. It has a long history of disagreeing with Britain and outvoting Britain as Margaret Thatcher found to her cost on occasion. Zimbabwe was suspended because the members plural, not just Britain, decided to. The days when the Commonweath does what Britain wants are long long gone. Furthermore adding in the word plantation was deliberately provacative and POV because it has rascist undertones for many readers. Whatever about the original rascist reason why past generations of whites got hold of the land, there is nothing to suggest that every current white farmer subscribes to rascism. Many had large numbers of black farm workers who themselves were murdered by the so-called 'war veterans'.

You are a competent historian, 172. Please don't plant emotive POV terms in paragraphs. Wikipedia deserves better than that. And so does this article. STÓD/ÉÍRE 00:09 Apr 2, 2003 (UTC)

You're a very competent historian too, but those additions were completley true. "Plantation" is necessary since he's not expropriating the property of white urbanites who are not great landowners. "British-led" might have been better, though.

172

I think the word farm is better. They are farms and it carries none of the baggage of plantation. As to British-led, the thing is the Commonwealth just . . . isn't. It has a long history of telling the British 'would you ever frig off!' Britain cannot gets its way if others object. They had the option of objecting and didn't. Far from it in some cases. STÓD/ÉÍRE 01:25 Apr 2, 2003 (UTC)

The paragraph referencing Land reform looks a little contrived to me. It is coupling Land reform, East Asian Tigers and decolonization. In the case of Singapore agricultural land is hardly a limiting factor in economic development. In the case of Hong Kong decolonization only took place 6 years ago with the colonial economic status quo preserved in the Basic Law. In the case of Taiwan the arrival of the ROC government looks more like an intensification of (mainland based) colonization rather than decolonization. If the reference to decolonization has to stay, then should the paragraph not just say South Korea? -- Alan Peakall 17:29 Apr 9, 2003 (UTC)

The article mentions the East Asian Tigers, but Singapore and Hong Kong are not mentioned in this article. There shouldn't be any confusion regarding Singapore and Hong Kong either. Common sense should dictate why. Everyone should know that these are basically city-states and banking and commercial centers. Does anyone think that a giant agrarian country like China could have followed the pattern of development of a city-state?

Call the KMT a form of Mainland colonization, but this does not deny the importance of land reforms there. In Zimbabwe land reform was a goal of decolonization. In Taiwan Land reforms were a reality of the defeat of the Japanese and their Taiwanese collaborators. Whether or not the KMT constitutes another colonial power is not an issue, land reforms still happened.

The article should make reference to Taiwan, China, South Korea, and for that matter even Malaysia. It does not matter if land reforms happened under the banner of decolonization or not or if they happened under the banner of nationalism, social revolution, or good economic planning. It just happens that in Zimbabwe they're being carried out under the banner of decolonization.

The article mentions East Asian Tigers and not specific countries because that article goes into detail about land reforms. It agree that it would be better to give Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, and China as examples to avoid confusing the issue with Hong Kong and Singapore, but for right now there really isn't a better link to offer on Wikipedia.

These are the only two Wikipedia articles of which I'm aware that could shed light on this issue: History of the People's Republic of China and East Asian Tigers.

172

Thanks for the response. The updated version entirely addresses my reservations. -- Alan Peakall 08:21 Apr 10, 2003 (UTC)

I think this photo is worth adding to the page. It shows Muagbe in a different light, and the way I think a lot of the world is starting to see him. user:J.J.

File:Mugabemedals.jpg

I mean no disrespect, but the Anglo-American world should not be conflated with "the world". Just this week French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin on Thursday spoke out against British and US interference in Zimbabwe after meeting Thabo Mbeki in Cape Town, calling on the international community to support inter-African diplomatic efforts such as the meeting of heads of state of South Africa, Malawi and Nigeria over the Zimbabwe crisis. While I am from the US, I'm sure that many Wiki contributors who do not hail from the industrialized English-speaking world do not appreciate the subconscious Amero-centrism pervasive on the part of many contributors. In fact, this was a contentious debate about a month ago on Wiki (which I avoided but observed with great interest). France, South Africa, Namibia, Anglo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malaysia, and China, which are among the key nations not hostile to the Zimbabwe government, are part of "the world" as well. 172

All I said was "a lot" of the world. I think even if they view Mr. Mugabe as someone they can do business with, the Chinese, French, etc still think of him as a fairly dictatorial figure.

But back to the photo. I think it is good, but which photo should it replace?

user:J.J.

None of them. Let's avoid trying to make political statements with photos. 172

I think it would go well alongside the "caricature" comment. user:J.J.

Come on. Enough with the political statements. You'd have to admit too that the "caricature" comment shouldn't be in bold lettering as a heading. This article needs a little NPOVing. 172

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Robert Mugabe/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Well written artilce. But it needs more pictures and may need more citations. --Oneworld25 16:52, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 16:52, 4 March 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 22:00, 3 May 2016 (UTC)