Some years ago, I suddenly became aware of the deep interest I had developed in Zimbabwe, her president, Mr. Robert Gabriel Mugabe whose death at the age of 95 occurred on September 6, 2019 in faraway Singapore, Zimbabwean politics and politicians, and the battle of wits that had raged between Mr. Mugabe and the Western world after he undertook the controversial “land reforms” programme in which 80 percent of Zimbabwean lands which had been in the hands about 5 percent of the population made up of white farmers were retrieved and redistributed so the indigenous black population could also have access to the land of their ancestors.
I suddenly found myself writing several articles on Zimbabwe as my acquaintance with her local and international politics grew. Of all my articles on Zimbabwe, two stood out, more widely circulated and received. They are: “Is The West Lusting For Robert Mugabe Again?” and “Is Autumn Finally Here For Robert Mugabe?” (Anybody interested can google them up and read, including, “Is Robert Mugabe’s Fall Symbolic?”).
Mr. Mugabe had ruled Zimbabwe for 37 years, from 1980 when the country attained her independence from Britain to November 2017 when a group of officers of the Zimbabwe Defense Forces (who had been his strong allies and backbone) conspired with the leadership of his party, ZANU-PF, to remove him from power.
Mugabe is a very complicated subject. If you are not very careful when examining Mugabe’s life and career, you might either be overwhelmed into hasty conclusions about him by the profound bias of the Western media against him or by his well-articulated and brilliant attempts to outwit his Western antagonists in the serious, protracted propaganda war that had flourished between them since Mugabe fell out of favour with his erstwhile Western friends. But what appeared so clear to me was that the efforts dutifully deployed by the two camps were largely self-serving, and, in fact, had little or nothing to do with the welfare of the long-suffering people of Zimbabwe – the hapless victims of the grand battle of the two elephants – which both of them elaborately claimed to be advancing.
Now, why was the West unyielding in her determination and concerted effort to get Mugabe out of power? In a 2012 article entitled, “Is The West Lusting For Robert Mugabe Again?” I made the following observation: “When Zimbabwe won independence from Britain in 1980, Mugabe was a darling of the West, especially, the UK, whose queen promptly awarded him an honorary knighthood.
He made enchanting reconciliatory speeches and gestures at the end of the bitter liberation war from which Britain was able to reassure itself that Mugabe would always be trusted to remain a “good boy,” and would never undertake any measures that would affect British interests in Zimbabwe where a tiny minority of white settlers controlled a greater portion of farmlands to the great disadvantage of the vast majority of black Zimbabweans. (This was despite Mugabe’s claims that at the Lancaster House discussions, they had agreed with the British that there would be “land reforms.”)
And for the next ten years, while Mugabe undertook policies that ushered the country into prosperity in manufacturing, mining, agriculture etc., he was celebrated by the global media and feted in Western capitals from where glowing tributes always flooded his doorsteps. It is widely believed that Mugabe’s land reforms which largely contributed to his present troubles with the Western world were not totally informed by patriotic motives – to let black Zimbabweans benefit from equitable redistribution of the lands.
Those who hold this view point to the fact that the recovered lands ended up mostly in the hands of his cronies and fellow war veterans. The belief was that the land reform policy was a desperate political move to consolidate his hold on power at a time it appeared to be slipping from his hands. And this has proved a very costly decision for him and his country. Indeed, Zimbabwe has practically passed through the valley of the shadow of death.”
Mugabe wanted to remain in power at all costs, and so, the “land reforms” programme was a masterstroke he used to consolidate his hold on the heart of the people. But he was quite unprepared for the far-reaching consequences of this expedient policy. Those who inherited the farms were clearly unequipped to continue the highly mechanised and large-scale farming that made Zimbabwe the “food basket” of the continent. Scarcity and hunger, therefore, wasted no time in overrunning the land with crushing impact.
This was worsened by the debilitating sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the West led by Britain and the United States. So, whatever, efforts Zimbabwe made to recover from the unspeakable impoverishment were crushingly frustrated by the biting sanctions which the West strictly enforced and the devouring corruption flourishing in Mugabe’s regime. The inflation was unspeakable as the Zimbabwean dollar became worthless. It was so bad that 35 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars became the equivalent of US$1.
The attempts by the opposition party, the late Morgan Tsvagirai-led Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), to democratically remove Mugabe and his party and take over were largely discredited by the overt support he received from the West which Mugabe unduly milked to convince the people that Mr. Tsvangirai would immediately return the lands to the whites if he gained power. Although, there were widespread allegations of rigging by Mugabe and his party, but Mr. Tsvangirai, in my opinion, was often overwhelmed by Mugabe’s very powerful propaganda machine which found him badly diminished. His mistake was that he did not readily see the need to re-brand the party, move to the back stage and allow a new face to fly the party’s flag in order to counter Mugabe’s propaganda till he died at 68 on February 14, 2018 in Johannesburg.
Mugabe’s other argument was that the West only wanted a “regime change” in Zimbabwe and NOT democracy. It was easy for him to sell this view due to the often hypocritical and selective ways the West pursued its pro-democracy advocacy in Africa. One was often forced to ask: would the West have hounded Mugabe the way she did if he did not carry out the “land reforms” that took away the lands from the minority white farmers even if he was the worst tyrant in Africa? The answer is most likely a big NO. Across the continent, there were other leaders whose human rights records and anti-democratic practices were far worse than Mugabe’s, yet, they remained in the warm embrace of the West, and their atrocities in office only managed to receive footnote mentions in the Western media.
So, the belief lingered that all they wanted was to stampede Mugabe out of power and drag him to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague and put him out of circulation to “teach a BIG lesson” to other African leaders on how not to disrespect the “white masters”!
But Mugabe’s human rights records remain egregious and inexcusable. The hideous massacre of 20, 000 Ndebele people (although he continued to deny involvement) is a genocide that will continue to haunt his name. There were also reports of “pogrom, torture, indefinite detention” of perceived enemies. Again, while the rest of Zimbabweans were tormented by terribly lack, poverty and hunger, Mugabe, his family and cronies reportedly lived in incredible luxuries in the country and across the world.
My main concern now, however, is that nothing has changed despite Mugabe’s exit. The same cabal under whom Zimbabwe went into ruins is still in charge, so the Zimbabweans rejoiced a bit too early. The party only sacrificed Mugabe to re-brand and retain power. Although, Zimbabwe has now embraced the Eastern countries after being rejected by the West, we can only hope that the country will come out better and that they are not with open eyes submitting themselves for decolonisation.
Independent (NG)
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