Farmers must adapt to new megatrend
Robert Mugabe died last week. The former president of Zimbabwe had an incredible ability to manipulate and control perception. This, combined with cunning and brutality, made him a formidable force.
He used these skills in the
1960s-1970s when he overthrew the white Rhodesian establishment, into which I was born. When Mugabe eventually took power in 1980, white Rhodesians were bemused the world could not see him for what he really was. They were also perplexed as to why they were seen as villains when Mugabe was clearly the butcher.
I believe the world experiences certain megatrends that last 20-40 years. The megatrend around the 1950s to
1990s was all people are equal. The British gave independence to India and began relinquishing their colonies. Ho
Chi Minh booted the French out of Vietnam, Martin Luther King was championing civil rights in the United States and apartheid was eventually abolished in South Africa. Mugabe was in alignment with the megatrend.
The white Rhodesians, however, were too slow to acknowledge this trend.
To the world, they appeared to be working against the megatrend of equality.
But white Rhodesians will argue they were fighting for the welfare of the Africans too.
The obituaries paint Mugabe as the liberator who turned bad after he came to power in 1980.
But Mugabe was at his most murderous before that.
His conduct during the ‘‘bush war’’ was calculated brutality against his own tribe, the Shona.
He claimed to be liberating them but they were his main targets. Mugabe’s men would infiltrate from Mozambique and visit rural villages and make examples of a few people. Chop off someone’s lips or their tongue, maybe a few fingers or simply kill someone. As well, in a cunning plan the insurgents would choose a villager, preferably someone with no authority or someone who was not liked within the village. Someone with an axe to grind.
They would make this person their ‘‘contact man’’. With his newfound status, the contact man had the power to have anyone in the village killed.
This tactic of giving power to the outcast kept Mugabe in power for 37 years.
The bush war was basically the Rhodesian security forces, both black and white, tracking down these insurgents so they couldn’t terrorise the rural villages – fighting against Mugabe to protect the African population. But from the outside, the Rhodesians appeared to be against the megatrend of equality for all men.
At the time there were roughly 3 million Africans in Rhodesia. But it was the 150,000 whites who controlled the country. They were the backbone of the economy and had turned Rhodesia into an agricultural powerhouse.
Africans had a proportional vote in parliament but they wanted a fully democratic system.
If we force a complicated topic into one sentence, we could say the whites didn’t want this, as they would obviously lose majority power and they feared populist policies would be voted in that would ruin the economy.
Moderate African politicians and chiefs were keen to have more of a say in how the country was run. But the whites, oblivious to the power of the ‘‘equality’’ megatrend, felt the proposed changes were too unreasonable. So they delayed or made small changes and confirmed democratic representation of Africans was always going to happen but sometime in the future.
The whites always seemed to be forthright when communicating their stance.
Which, I believe, amplified the global perception they were going against the equality megatrend. Mugabe had no plans to wait around. Mugabe was inspired by Gandhi’s achievements in India. Although clearly not by Gandhi’s ‘‘nonviolent resistance’’ tactics.
Instead, the methods of Sun Tzu were more to his liking.
China supplied the weapons and Mugabe set about to subdue the African people all while preaching on the international stage as if he was a principled liberator fighting a repressive white minority.
By 1980, the white Rhodesians were alone in the world. Britain, the United Nations and the Commonwealth were against them, and they were operating under international sanctions.
They never lost a firefight in the bush but they were outgunned in the PR war.
The megatrend today is the importance of the natural world.
This includes the environment and animals. I can think of a minority group who are the backbone of our country.
The perception is they are too slow to react to changing expectations. They too appear to be quite forthright when communicating their stance.
They are also perplexed that they are seen as the villains in the story. They ask why can’t the world see the truth? You can’t escape the megatrend, you can’t escape the change. But by recognising and embracing the megatrend early, you can at least escape the Mugabes of the world.