SA should heed Zim warnings

oday, it is a generation and a half – 39 years to be precise – since the Union Jack was lowered over the rebel, white-run country of Rhodesia and Robert Mugabe stepped up as the first president of an independent Zimbabwe. The first reaction of many South Africans to this would be: who cares?

Although there are vast differences between what happened in Zimbabwe and what happened here, there are enough similarities for South Africans to pay attention, so we don’t make the same mistakes.

Mugabe made education a priority and, whatever damage he did to his country, his people hold their own all over the world because of how they have been schooled. That’s a lesson for us. Tribalism in Zimbabwe was essentially behind the

massacres in the province of Matabeleland, carried out by mainly Shona-speaking soldiers loyal to Mugabe, against Ndebele-speaking people loyal to Joshua Nkomo. Tribalism in this country is not nearly the evil it was, and is, in Zimbabwe. We must never let it become so.

Evicting thousands of white farmers from their land in Zimbabwe caused a catastrophic collapse of agriculture from which the country is yet to recover. The beneficiaries of that forced land redistribution were not poor people, they were the elite of Mugabe’s governing Zanu-PF party. Another warning light for us here.

Ill-advised socialist policies and poor budget control forced Mugabe to take the poisonous handouts of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which insisted he scrap food subsidies, which accelerated poverty and kick-started the Zimbabwean diaspora.

A one-party state mentality made it easy for ZanuPF and its military and police to bludgeon dissent and allowed Emmerson Mnangagwa effectively to continue where Mugabe left off.

Zimbabwe is more than just a neighbour: it is a living warning for us.