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News & ArtsWednesday, October 26, 2011
History My Twin Towers
Posted by Charles Mudede on Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 4:08 PM
You can see them over here. One is Mukwati and the other is Kaguvi. In the early 80s, these buildings buzzed with hope, ideas, and big dreams. By 1987, the country became a one-party state. By 88, the buildings were dreamless and we moved to Botswana, one of the few success stories of Africa. In one year my father set up more industries in Botswana than during his entire time, 7 years, with the Zimbabwe government (he barely got 8 going, he told me). My father was a capitalist; I'm a Marxist, but we both loved factories and shared an Hegelian admiration for human activity and large-scale projects.
It's not surprising that my best friend during my time in Zimbabwe (1981 to 1987) was Robert Bertram, whose father owned a factory that manufactured, among other things, metal frames for beds. It's also not surprising that my first job was in a factory in Barking, a borough of London. The factory, owned and operated by an Irishman (John Hollywood), made bricks and exported them to Brussels. I was happy in this factory, as well as the Bertram's factory (yes, they were related to the South African wine family) and the factories my father started in Ramotswa, Botswana.
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For all of Zimbabwe's recent troubles, Paul Theroux in his "Dark Star Safari" found it to be one of his favorite places on his long overland trip from Egypt to South Africa. Their economy is in tatters, but unlike, say, nearby Malawi, they actually HAD an economy, and still do; Zimbabweans still have a strong commercial instinct, and know how to make and do things and find enjoyment in the doing and making. I think once Mugabe dies Zimbabwe can take a prominent role in Africa's resurgence again.
Would you ever go back and teach or do something else in Zimbabwe, Charles, if things changed there? Or is it too late for that, for you?
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@3) carrying and cutting bricks
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It's funny, I quite like those "grimly modernist" buildings. They remind me of Manchester or Liverpool, or even a few buildings around Seattle. It's a much-maligned style these days, which means they'll be fashionable again one day, and we'll regret tearing them all down to build whatever cheap, ugly retro crap we replace them with.
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Have you guys watched "Life on Mars" about a 2008 cop that gets transported into 1973?
It's cool when he looks up and sees the Twin Towers and says "no way".
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The style of those buildings is "government subsidized housing", and yes, by the looks of things, we'll be seeing quite a bit more of that style in the near future.
11
In the face his support for Obama and denigrating libertarians: Only Mudede doesn't see the irony that his native country was ruined by a corrupt centralized socialist government (ZANU-PF), redistributing wealth (farms), causing the "Atlases" of Africa to shrug-off to Canada, Australia, Britain etc, leaving Zim in ruins.
And then his family found hope and opportunity in Botswana -- a democratic republic governed by a conservative BPD party since its independence.
But he thinks somehow the opposite will be true here...
Charles, if you weren't so pathetically ignorant, you would be funny.
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