Zimbabwe and South Africa

Sometimes in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, I imagine what I would do if I had the power to set the world to rights. Or at least I used to, until the Law of Unintended Consequences became clearer to me. Which means that you do something that seems like a good idea, and it backfires on you in ways you couldn’t necessarily have predicted. Like the US invading Iraq, the majority Shias gaining power there and gradually aligning themselves with that other Shia nation, and enemy of the US, Iran. Or like Eco-minded people wanting GM-Free soya, so producers start chopping down the Amazon in order to grow the crops to satisfy the demand. Or the US subsidising the planting of bio-fuels, with the result that less food is produced, prices go up, and many ‘undeveloped’ countries can no longer afford to feed themselves.

Actually, I reckon many of these consequences could have been foreseen with a bit of forethought. But when an issue enters the political arena, often the only way is to turn it into a black and white issue that leaves no room for doubt, in public at any rate. And that forestalls intelligent discussion. Perhaps democracies suffer more from this than more autocratic countries, which have the luxury of not having to please the population moment-to-moment. Russia seems to have known exactly what it was doing when it invaded Georgia recently, and got the result it wanted very quickly.

One fantasy I did hang onto was kidnapping Robert Mugabe and keeping him in the sort of Arctic hideout that Superman has until things changed for the better in Zimbabwe. But of course unless you know the situation very well, and even if you do, it’s hard to know what might happen as a result. Maybe his cronies would take over, and do a better job of hanging on to power than Mugabe has.

At any rate, a power sharing agreement has just been reached between Mugabe and the Opposition, so it is probably just as well that I didn’t kidnap him. The Opposition did rather better than Mugabe in recent elections and he was no longer able to rig the results so easily. This isn’t the end, but it’s probably the beginning of the end of the crisis that has destroyed the economic base of a country in which prices are currently increasing 10 fold every 3 weeks.


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In April I wrote that the political instability in Zimbabwe, caused by the opposition demanding its rightful say, will finally be coming to an end by September this year. It looks like I scored a hit there!

My reasoning was that, using 1 degree orbs, Zimbabwe will be finishing a 3 year period in which the Progressed Sun (Leader) has been opposing natal then progressed Uranus (instability).

As I also wrote then and in August, whatever political changes occur, Zimbabwe will continue to have natal Sun opposite Pluto, so there will always be a tendency for the leaders to become dictatorial. Iran and Pakistan also have Sun opposite Pluto, and we see the same tendencies there. And Russia has Sun square Pluto.

Unfortunately, South Africa also has Sun opposite Pluto.


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The South African Sun is in the 9th House, which was expressed in Nelson Mandela being as much a ‘spiritual’ leader as an administrative leader. The current leader Thabo Mbeki does not have this quality, but is seen as intellectual and academic, another 9th House attribute.

Mbeki is also known for defending the view that HIV does not cause AIDS, and this in a country with a massive Aids epidemic. Mbeki has natal Sun in Gemini square to Neptune. This viewpoint strikes me as delusory (it is used to justify the idea of Aids as a western conspiracy), and is perhaps indicative of the beginnings of a degeneration in the South African leadership.

Jacob Zuma is the probable next President. He is a populist and has had himself photographed in traditional tribal dress. He has been surrounded by allegations of rape and corruption for years. He was acquitted of rape, and during the trial sang ‘Bring Me My Machine Gun’ with the crowd of supporters outside. In the last few days the corruption allegations – of which he seems almost certainly guilty – were thrown out of court for being ‘politically motivated’.

Zuma was born on 12th April 1942. He has natal Sun in Aries sextile Mars, Moon square Mars, and Mars square Neptune. All that Mars/Aries is good for an impulsive strongman leader. And Mars in Gemini conjunct Jupiter and square Neptune is perfect for singing ‘Bring Me My Machine Gun’.

So I think it likely that under Zuma we will start to see a serious slide towards dictatorship, and the fulfilment of the Sun opposite Pluto in the natal chart.

Zuma has described himself as a socialist, and he supports redistribution of wealth. In this context, this would include ‘land reform’, which has been so disastrous for the Zimbabwean economy. It has already begun in South Africa, with white farmers being subject to compulsory purchase of their land. This is fair enough in itself, except that the farms are often then left to rot. One farmer described the dead cattle in the fields of his old farm, and how the drainage had been ripped up and sold. He has since bought another farm, and is again finding himself subject to a compulsory purchase order.

These African farms have been a source of much wealth for their countries, but they are complex operations run on tight margins. In Zimbabwe they were stolen and handed over to people – often Mugabe cronies – who had no intention of farming like this. A similar development seems to be starting up, but in a more civilised way (for now) in South Africa as well.