Divisive Mugabe given muted farewell

third full as the country’s military and civilian leadership, a small group of foreign dignitaries, and members of the Mugabe family bade their formal farewells at a five-hour ceremony yesterday.

In one of the most discombobulating moments, President Emmerson Mnangagwa praised the man he betrayed and overthrew in a coup two years ago as ‘‘our revolutionary icon, statesman, leader, wartime commander, and former president’’.

He went on to pay tribute to Grace Mugabe, the former president’s widow, who sat silently throughout.

Serving and former presidents from Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa paid tribute to Mugabe, who died last week aged 95, as one of the last of a generation of pan-african leaders who emerged from the end of colonial rule.

Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 77, the dictator of Equatorial Guinea who has run a brutal and kleptocratic regime since 1979, opened the tributes to Mugabe as a ‘‘true African icon in the liberation of the continent’’.

Jerry Rawlings, 72, the former president of Ghana, said ‘‘he consistently demonstrated his steadfast commitment to our vision of Africa’’.

The Chinese and Russian governments appointed ambassadors to read out tributes. There was no mention of Mugabe’s violence against opponents and allies alike, thousands slaughtered in the massacres known as the Gukurahundi in the Eighties, or the extraordinary wealth his family amassed while the country was reduced to penury.

But the largely bare terraces reflect a profound truth that Zimbabweans are too preoccupied with survival to give him much thought.

– Telegraph Group