Good riddance to Mugabe
ROBERT Mugabe has dominated the African political landscape for a long time. He burst into the international scene during the Geneva Convention of 1976.
Mugabe became the central actor in Zimbabwe’s political theatre, playing his role as an adventurer and opportunist.
It is shocking and pathetic to see a man who was so wise and respected ending his well-masked career in such a shameful manner. His disgrace was his wife, Grace. Mugabe’s legacy will be controversial and very confusing for a long time into the future.
His personal life publicly was exemplary in some respects.
He was educated and brave, and was never associated with immoral behaviour, such as being a womaniser or a drunkard.
He was seen as one man who stood up to European arrogance.
The success of his guerilla fighters inspired people.
He stood up, and fought tooth and nail against the humiliation and degradation of black people in Zimbabwe.
In then Rhodesia, the treatment of black people and their uprooting from their land was as cruel and inhumane as it was in South Africa.
The resentment of Zimbabwe’s black peasants emanated from the cruel land dispossession and the turning of them into cheap labourers for the white settlers.
Cecil Rhodes wanted Africans to give up 90% of their land rights and become workers.
The colonial administrators viewed the African resistance and resentment as laziness.
Zimbabweans who were genuinely driven by land hunger were easily persuaded to take up arms against the regime.
Mugabe was born in the rural village of Kutama, north-east of Harare, 93 years ago.
After equipping himself with education he joined the nationalists’ struggle of Zimbabwe, and was imprisoned from 1963 to 1975.
On his release, he crossed to Mozambique, where he led and intensified the armed struggle against the Rhodesian regime.
Politically, in the early years his vaulting ambition was not noticed, though the signs were there.
He definitely was a genius in hiding his true colours to the whole world.
His paranoia fed his tyrannical tendencies that started to show in the early years after independence.
He summarily sacked and persecuted Joshua Nkomo, the leader of Zapu, two years after independence.
The excuse was that Nkomo was plotting to overthrow his government.
The arrest and eviction of Ndabaningi Sithole from his farm in 1994, under the pretext that he was plotting to assassinate Mugabe, is one of many examples that showed that Mugabe was a hypocrite.
The arrest, detention and the torture of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was another sad act of barbarism by Mugabe.
His sinister objective of being a one-man show in Zimbabwe were glaringly exposed when he unleashed a massacre of the amaNdebele-speaking people of Zimbabwe.
During that tragedy, both the Western and Eastern political blocs did not question or condemn his actions, since Mugabe was portraying himself as friend of both the East and West after independence.
One of the reasons that made the West not condemn Mugabe’s cruelty was because he was publicly preaching “reconciliation”, especially between white and blacks.
His public utterances attracted a lot of foreign aid and donations to his country.
To his credit, Mugabe was not squandering the international aid for personal use.
He used the money to provide high quality healthcare and education, and improved social amenities.
Mugabe was quick to realise that his Eastern friends could only assist him with arms – no financial, material and other practical forms of support could he could get from them, hence he systematically ingratiated himself with the West.
The incentive for the West to bankroll Mugabe was to keep him away from communist influences.
Southern Africa was the battlefield of the Cold War for these two ideological blocs.
Mugabe hated the West, but loved their money with passion.
During this period, Mugabe was not expanding his economic base to absorb his fast-growing population (seven to 15 million between 1980 and 2000).
The sudden collapse of the Eastern bloc countries, together with the Soviet Union, left Mugabe exposed for the bubble of the economy he presided over.
When the Soviet Union collapsed the Western nations that had been funding Mugabe started to deal with him in “normal terms”.
The Europeans were also looking inwards and had no time to compete for ideological dominance – after all they believed they had won that contest.
The withdrawal of the Cubans from Angola and the independence of Namibia literally killed the imperialists’ interests in Southern Africa.
Mugabe was forced to cut his cloth to his size.
Western nations were not any more prepared to disperse hand-outs. Mugabe went berserk. Though he was always preaching multi-party democracy, deep down in his heart he was working towards a one-party state.
This was demonstrated by his reaction to the rejection of his referendum to increase his hold on power in 2000, when he inflamed racial tensions and incited war veterans to forcibly occupy white farms.
All the kneejerk remedies he experimented with to extricate his country from a ravaged economy did not help him.
Hyperinflation, driven by his printing of money to appease the civil servants and war veterans, led to a total meltdown of the economy.
Mugabe failed to use all his wisdom for the good and advancement of his people. Seeing his back could be the opening of a new chapter in the way African leaders lead their people.
We can only say to him, “Good riddance and thanks for going”.