Thoughts on Mugabe - A side note on Zimbabwe
by Wangari Kebuchi on May 3, 2008 in Blog, Kenya Crisis
It may be clear to the world that Mugabe has to be removed from office, but we must not assume that this clarity is shared by a large proportion of Zimbabweans in Zimbabwe. The winds of change are sweeping across the Zimbabwean landscape but the main question is: Does Zimbabwe have its sails up?
Robert Mugabe is one of Zimbabwe and Africa’s heroes. He fought against colonial powers for the liberation of Zimbabweans and is a passionate smart and tough man. Few Africans can boast of the impressive resume the Mugabe has. Not only was he a freedom fighter, he has five bachelor’s degrees, two masters degrees and fourteen honorary degrees including from universities like the University of Massachusetts. Yet despite his intellectual superiority and longing for a free Zimbabwe, Mugabe seems to have lost sight of his purpose and has instead become the instigator of suffering and political oppression in Zimbabwe.
In the elections held in March 2008, the most notable result could perhaps be that Mugabe was able to garner about half of the popular vote. Even taking into consideration that Tsvangirai, Mugabe’s main rival, is claimed to have won 50.3% of the vote, Mugabe has still retained 49.7% of his nation’s support. Do we find it strange that despite the suffering his policies have brought on, nearly half the population still want Mugabe as their president?
I can think of at least two reasons as to why this is not strange. Firstly for many Africans who still smart from scars of change in leadership from colonial times, the sentiment is more ‘better the devil you know’ than anything else. Secondly, in the face of the great economic divide between whites and blacks, many black Zimbabweans may prefer to be ‘white-free’ than to continue to watch this divide grow. Mugabe may still be fighting for his people, where the framework of ‘people’ in his mind does not include white Zimbabweans.
Why, several decades after independence, does Mugabe still seem to be fighting against the white minority? Perhaps it was in Ghana where he lived and studied in 1951 that he came to associate freedom from oppression with the removal of white presence. Perhaps it was the need for a heavy-hand in a sharply divided nation in 1980, that the idea of supreme control became central to Mugabe’s regime. Indeed Mugabe, a former cattle herder raised by a single mother, seems to have lost touch with the common Zimbabwean and has come to be ranked currently as one in the top ten of the world’s worst dictators.
Mugabe’s rule was not always as out of touch as it is now reported to be. In the early years of his presidency, Mugabe instituted many social programs including rural health centers, primary schools and improved access to roads for those in the rural areas. Quite progressively, early on he introduced laws giving women rights equal to those of men – something uncommon in the world at the time. He also worked with his staunchest rivals to come up with cooperative solutions to Zimbabwe’s problems most notably to promote racial equality amongst white and black Zimbabweans. But these were the early years.
In 2005, Mugabe gave a directive to appropriate white-owned farms and redistribute them to his political allies. It was then that Zimbabwe started making global headlines when the decline of these farms, which were operating at only 20% of their capacity under the new and inexperienced management, drove the economy into hyperinflation. Homelessness and poverty became the new context of Zimbabwe. Average life expectancy was halved within a decade, four million people now face famine and unemployment soars at 70%.
Even though, given these statistics, one would think that the average Zimbabwean is quite certain that their beloved hero Mugabe, has lost touch with their reality, many still cling to him tightly. It is this lesson that a new administration, should there be one, must take into account. Mugabe has for a long time represented, no matter how extreme, justice and equality for his people. This representation falls out of the realm of tangible economic benefits and takes more of a philosophical, emotional place in the hearts and minds of many Zimbabweans. Alongside economic recovery, a new administration must not take the easy path to meet this need this by disenfranchising the white minority, but must take the much harder path of formulating creative and cooperative policy that addresses the unique context of Zimbabwe. A new administration must formulate a policy that embodies Mugabe inasmuch as he responds to a need in half of the population in Zimbabwe.
This of course is easier said than done, but given the current situation in Zimbabwe, new policy to address justice for the average Zimbabwean must be the nation’s new freedom fighter.
Comments
3 Responses to “Thoughts on Mugabe - A side note on Zimbabwe”
Got something to say?
It never ceases to amaze me how our africa intellectual elite has been blind to the realities of Mugabe’s shortcomings. As a zimbabwean I can sicerely share with you that most of the advances people claim Mugabe to have made were only possible because of the advanced economy that he inherited at Independence. Your suggestion that a significant portion of Zimbabwe still is behind Mugabe is not credible either. You imply that 49% of the electorate was behind Mugabe even if he opposition won 50.3% of the vote. Wrong. Simba Makoni got 9 % and the other independent got roughly 1%, leaving Mugabe with about 39%. Now you must also consider there are 3.5 million Zimbabweans that were not allowed to vote, those that are in South Africa Europe, the Americas and Australia. The estimated impact of these is 92% for the opposition MDC. So if you look at these realities with unbiased lenses, you can appreciate the existence of a long rotten dictatorship that has successfully hoodwinked even decent personalities in academia in passing it off as a nationalist/panafricanist party in Zimbabwe.
The current unrelenting anti-Mugabe news, opinion and analysis barrage seeks to conceal Zimbabwe opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai and the West’s complicit in Mugabe’s genocidal rule. In the early 80s, Mugabe exterminated 20 000 innocent villagers. The international community neither intervened nor chastised him. Scotland’s Edinburgh University, University of Massachusetts and Michigan State University awarded Mugabe honorary degrees in 1994, 1986 and 1990, respectively. In 1994, Mugabe became the Knight Commander of the Order of Bath, knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
Zimbabwe’s political juggernaut is about failed leadership and unsuitable political character. Tsvangirai, the West’s blameless darling, was a fully subscribed member of Mugabe’s Zanu PF party during the 80s Zimbabwean genocide when the dictator killed 20 000 innocent villagers. He even held the rank of “political commissar”. He never spoke out. As recently as 2004, he confirmed that Mugabe was his hero (The Independent (UK), June 20, 2004). His dictatorial rule split the MDC in 2005 and hence the opposition could not form a united front during this past election.
Zimbabweans in Zimbabwe know these unspoken truths and hence refused to give Tsvangirai an outright victory. If anything, the result shows that the dictator still has a lot of clout and cannot be easily brushed aside. The lesson for the rest of us is that: someone’s dictator is another’s hero-for-life.
Zimbabwe’s “genocide” grabbed global headlines only after the post-1999 killings of 300 opposition supporters. But now these killings included about a dozen whites. The dictator had also started repossessing white-owned farms to give to landless black peasants.
Now the international community is puzzled that Zimbabweans are nowhere near the recent Kenya-style post-election scenario, or, worse still, another Rwanda. Not in Zimbabwe.
After the re-run, things will definitely change with Mugabe’s departure, but the will stay the same. While Mugabe represents the last detour toward Zimbabwe’s final descent into hell, Tsvangirai represents a pseudo democratic renewal for the country. He is Robert Mugabe in democratic disguise.
Don’t be blinded by the western propagenda against great patriots like Mugabe or Chavez. Neither by their western government funded ngo’s.
To know more why Mugabe is demonize by the west and why they set up a puppet party like the MDC. Like they did in Iraq, Somalia, South America, etc; Read those following articles:
http://www.swans.com/library/art8/elich004.html
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4942/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/06/zimbabwe.topstories3