{"id":192541,"date":"2009-03-20T17:56:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T22:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/20\/oh-lord-wont-you-buy-me-a-mercedes-benz-zimbabwe-edition\/"},"modified":"2009-03-20T17:56:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-20T22:56:00","slug":"oh-lord-wont-you-buy-me-a-mercedes-benz-zimbabwe-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/20\/oh-lord-wont-you-buy-me-a-mercedes-benz-zimbabwe-edition\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh Lord, Won&#8217;t You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz (Zimbabwe Edition)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So it now appears that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/worldNews\/idUSTRE5282LB20090309?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=worldNews\">foul play has been ruled out in the Tsvangerai crash<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/worldNews\/idUSTRE52B22G20090312?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=worldNews\">MDC official Roy Bennett has been released from custody<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, Mugabe&#8217;s attempts to maintain his political power have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/20\/world\/africa\/20zimbabwe.html?ref=world\">gotten truly surreal<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>On his first day as education minister in a government so broke that most schools were closed and millions of children idle, David Coltart said he got a startling invitation.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCome and get your brand-new white Mercedes,\u201d an official told Mr. Coltart, a veteran opposition politician, as President Robert Mugabe peered down from a portrait on the minister\u2019s office wall.<\/p>\n<p>The offer of an E-Class Mercedes to every minister in the month-old power-sharing government was vintage Mugabe, an effort to seduce his political enemies with the lavish perks he has long bestowed on loyalists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">I would have offered him silver, or metallic blue, myself.<\/span>)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m an optimist, and see this as a sign of weakness.<\/p>\n<p>Mugabe had previously dismissed the MDC entirely, and how he is trying to bribe them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So it now appears that foul play has been ruled out in the Tsvangerai crash, and MDC official Roy Bennett has been released from custody. That being said, Mugabe&#8217;s attempts to maintain his political power have gotten truly surreal: On his first day as education minister in a government so broke that most schools were &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1095,970,1009],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa","category-corruption","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}