Some excerpts from the book
HOW THE STUDENTS FELL OUT WITH MUGABE OVER CORRUPTION
As Secretary General, with Edgar Mbwembwe as President of the Students’ Union, our most significant action is the AntiCorruption Demonstration of 29 September 1988.
We need a statement that articulates the issues, and contextualises our demands and action. I author the radical and militant AntiCorruption Document, with the assistance of the SRC Secretary for Information and Publicity, Tendai Kufa. Though hard-hitting, the statement is measured in its critique of Mugabe as a leader, and Zanu-PF as an institution.
The historic and hugely successful Students’ Union demonstration leads to the arrest and detention of the 15 SRC leaders and UZ lecturers, Kempton Makamure and Eliphas Mukonoweshuro.
Prof Shadrack Gutto (later Director of the Centre for African Renaissance Studies at Unisa) is summarily deported from Zimbabwe. He is being accused of writing the AntiCorruption Document that we have, in fact, authored.
As a foreigner, a Kenyan, the regime is merciless with him. He is given 48 hours to leave the country. The university governmentfunded grants and loans for 14 out of the 15 student leaders, are withdrawn. They cannot touch my funding, because, unlike the others, I am on an Anglo American Scholarship, awarded on the basis of outstanding academic merit and achievement.
The Mugabe regime is livid. It tries to pressurise Anglo American executives to withdraw my scholarship. They refuse. I surmise that the imperialists and capitalists have ways of making a positive contribution to the revolution! The Struggle has friends in the most unusual of places.
Two government ministers – Moven Mahachi, Minister of Home Affairs, and Dzingai Mutumbuka, Minister of Higher Education – are particularly virulent and Draconian in their persecution of students and lecturers. From the content of the AntiCorruption Document, it is clear that we still consider Zanu-PF as our party, and Robert Mugabe as our leader.
We are actually appealing to Mugabe, our upright and incorruptible revolutionary, to take drastic steps against corruption. How wrong we are. Mugabe is out of the country when we go into the streets. Upon his return, he is incensed by our Anti-Corruption Demonstration and its document.
He denounces us as desperadoes without better things to do with our time. We are gutted, despondent and totally disillusioned. This is it. We are done with these running dogs of imperialism. We sever links with Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF. The divorce is final. This is October 1988. CONFRONTATION WITH MUGABE OVER THE ONE-PARTY STATE
A direct confrontation with Mugabe over the one-party state ensues. Friday, 13 July 1990, is graduation day for the student groups that finished their studies in December 1989.
As the President of the Students’ Union, traditionally and by convention, I am part of the graduation process, which includes Mugabe as the Chancellor of the university.
I was in detention for six weeks in October and November 1989, and we are meeting for the first time since that ugly episode. Moreover, as a union, we have now taken an official position against the one-party system in Zimbabwe. After the main ceremony in the Great Hall, we all troop to the College Green’ where graduates and their guests are served food and beverages. This is where it all happens.
Vice Chancellor Walter Kamba introduces me to Mugabe, and the armed and menacing Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) operatives quickly encircle the three of us. Mugabe tries small talk, ‘How many new Engineering graduates were there today? When I graduated from Fort Hare in 1951, there were nine graduates in the whole country.’ I am not having any of that meaningless talk. I know I only have this man for a minute, if not seconds. I have to attack with stealth and vigour. I unexpectedly and aggressively barge in, completely out of the blue, saying, ‘We do not want to talk about any of that. We are completely against the one-party state by any means necessary. We do not want a one-party state in Zimbabwe!’
Mugabe is stunned. He looks dazed, but soon gathers his composure, and tries to shoot back, ‘If you take such extreme views we will be dismissive of your views.’ I was ready for him. ‘We have already dismissed your thinking, so it is not consequential whether you dismiss our views or not!’
Mugabe is visibly livid. His face is awash with discomfort. He is beside himself with rage. However, he cannot find his tongue. Kamba then moves with alacrity and dexterity in a rescue bid to calm the raging waters. ‘We need rational disputation… we must have collegial dialogue.’ It is too late. I am not even listening. The mission is accomplished. The numerous security details who had completely encircled the three of us quickly whisk away the wounded and verbally incapacitated Mugabe. DEALING WITH RACISM IN THE UNITED STATES, IN SPITE OF HIGH ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
All these academic endeavours are not without amusing and invidious incidents with political undertones. In February 2000, while teaching at MIT, during my first Advanced Control Systems lecture, two white professors in the department decide to attend my class.
They explain their presence by saying they want to see how I present the subject matter in order to efficaciously link my material to theirs, as our subjects are related. I am not convinced. I suspect they are just checking to see whether the African can effectively teach at MIT – the top Engineering school in the world! Well, I have to deliver.
When I am done, the entire class of 26 students stands up in a rousing standing ovation. This is not even a seminar. It is a class lecture. The two observing colleagues sheepishly leave the room and go straight to the Department Head, Prof Edward Crawley, who later shares with me the content of their discussions. ‘I have been teaching here at MIT for 15 years. I have never seen such a rousing standing ovation given for a class lecture. This guy is good,’ one of the wowed colleagues says to Prof Crawley.
I quietly say to myself: ‘How patronising. Even with your 15 years at MIT, what makes you think that you are, or you understand, the benchmark or reference point for teaching ability or skill? Surely, an African or a black person can have capacity and ability, beyond and unexperienced by the best of white achievement. Black success or ability does not need to be referenced to, benchmarked by, or constrained by white standards. There is no need for such validation.’
Another amusing altercation occurs at the Nasa Lewis Research Centre in July 1997, during discussions about applications of my mobile robotics research results to US Unmanned Military Vehicles (UMVs) and the Nasa Mars Sojourner Rover.
In attendance are top officials from Nasa, the US Army and MIT. This is a high-level, topsecret meeting whose contents and outcomes the US researchers and scientists would not want to get to their competitors, in particular the Russians and the Chinese.
The US Army Chief Research Scientist – who is also a retired Four Star General – chairing the meeting, sternly looks at me and says: ‘Where are you from?’ I say, ‘Zimbabwe’. ‘Well, we are not about to be attacked by that small country. You can stay in the meeting.’ ‘How rich?’ I quietly ponder to myself. ‘As if you have a choice! These are my ideas we seek to apply to UMVs and the Mars Rover. Without me, there would be no meeting.
‘In any case, how do you know that my loyalty does not lie with the Chinese or the Russians?’ Well, well, that is how it is. White supremacy always wants you to feel that it is doing you a favour, even when you are the one holding all the chips.