Good luck Zimbabwe, you need it!

The people of Zimbabwe have every right to be jubilant about the fall of Robert Mugabe.

It’s a time of celebration, but also of peril because the future is still uncertain. It may well prove to be a false dawn and his successor may also prove to be no different from Mugabe. However let’s allow our neighbours to enjoy the moment. Mugabe’s forced resignation offers them an opportunity to start afresh.

A liberation hero who swept into the corridors of power in 1980 as leader of Zanu – later to become Zanu-PF – he later turned Zimbabwe into his personal fiefdom, ruling the country with an iron fist.

For all the pretences of a democratic state, Zimbabwe was an authoritarian, police state in which political dissent was not tolerated. About 20 000 Ndebeles were massacred by his regime in the early 1980s, an unspeakable crime in which Mugabe’s likely successor Emmerson Mnangagwa played a central role.

When Mugabe lost elections in the 2000s, he rigged them to stay in power, aided and abetted, lest it be forgotten, by Mnangagwa, and the soldiers who eventually turned against him last week.

Mugabe was an unmitigated disaster as a manager of the economy of his country, destroying its backbone – the white community owned commercial farming sector – through the violent seizure of productive farms. He parcelled some of the productive land to leading members of his inner circle who kept him in power.

As a result, the economy went into freefall, sending millions of Zimbabweans across the border to seek refuge in other countries, including South Africa.

Mugabe’s downfall is a wonderful opportunity for Zimbabweans to rebuild their country.

The people of Zimbabwe also need credible, free and fair elections so that a legitimate government, enjoying the support of the people, can begin the hard work of rebuilding a nation that was once the breadbasket of the region.

It’s going to demand hard work from all the people to rebuild a ruined land, but Zimbabweans are a resilient and resourceful people who, with the help of the international community, should be able to turn things around.

We wish them well!