Medieval history and contemporary experiences have proven that it takes tough, cautious efforts for human beings engrossed in merriment not to forget the days of suffering, oppression, intimidation, darkness and slavery before the twilight to a hopeful destiny. With the wild jubilation that greeted his recent resignation as president of Zimbabwe, it becomes imperative to wonder at what point Robert Gabriel Mugabe’s position as president became illegality or at what point he himself became a leper that must be sent out of the camp if the country must progress.
Although Mugabe’s descent from hero to villain has been long in coming, the final leg of his downfall began on November 15, 2017, when the Zimbabwean military chiefs placed him under house arrest and took control of state television. He eventually bowed out on Tuesday, November 21, following his letter which was read by the speaker of Zimbabwe’s parliament. Mugabe’s tight hold on power was the easily identified straw that finally broke the camel’s back. The 93-year-old Mugabe once quipped that he would rule Zimbabwe until he turned 100.
Although the southern African nation at a time was once nicknamed ‘the breadbasket of Africa’ due to its natural resources, like several countries of the world, Zimbabwe under Mugabe had its own share of economic turbulence which resulted in high inflation, poverty and depression.
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Mugabe vs western powers
For many young Zimbabweans, their jubilation over Mugabe’s exit stemmed not from any economic reason but the fact that in their entire life, they had known no other leader but Mugabe, and thus desperately desired a change that will usher in a new president. But some African commentators are of the view that while it is understandable and desirable for Zimbabweans to seek fresh leaders, the same view cannot be held of western powers that joined the jubilation train following Mugabe’s resignation.
“From Margaret Thatcher’s crude acknowledgement to Tony Blair’s open hostility, the British establishment has had to contend with an assertive Mugabe, ironically himself an epitome of British success. Educated by the Jesuits in the British settler colony of Rhodesia, he is what the late Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe would have called an educated British-protected person. His profit from this British education is that he knows the British language well enough and uses it to curse them,” wrote Roy Agyemang, director/producer of the award-winning documentary, ‘Mugabe’.
“The economy had spun out of control, threatening to sweep him under politically. Sanctions which the western world had unleashed on Zimbabwe, ostensibly for imperilling human rights, many say as punishment for taking back the land were biting his people as never before. The adversities were overwhelming. Yet he hung on, just. It is this ability to ride the storm, which attracted me to make the film ‘Mugabe: Villain or Hero?’, where I spent three years in Zimbabwe gaining rare access to the Zimbabwean leader,” he said.
Douglas Hurd, a former British foreign secretary, once also said that the “trouble with Mugabe is that he thinks like us and knows us”. The global outcries against Mugabe’s leadership in Zimbabwe reached a crescendo between 2007 and 2009 when hyperinflation saw the country’s currency spiralling out of control and average Zimbabweans needing billions of Zimbabwean dollars to buy a loaf of bread.
But in the beginning, it was not so with Zimbabwe under Mugabe. He was a liberator who rid the former British colony Rhodesia of white minority rule. He was beloved then and still beloved by sections of Zimbabwean public, only that they now want to try something new. Mugabe was a political prisoner turned revolutionary and swept to power in 1980 elections after a violent insurgency and economic sanctions forced the then Rhodesian government to the negotiating table.
To several African international commentators, Mugabe is more than just a politician. He was a leader who led a cause and “becomes the cause itself”, as his militant supporters would say; and the cause has something to do with giving back the African his dignity well beyond symbols of nominal independence. “I want you to understand that the reason I have stayed long in power, 36 years on, is because I want to empower all of you my fellow black Zimbabweans. No other president in the entire continent of Africa has done what I have done for you, but you continue to take me for granted,” Mugabe, who first served as Prime Minister from 1980 to 1987, wrote in a letter to Zimbabweans last year.
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“My days on this earth are numbered, but I know that once I am gone, you and your children will never forget about me. I have fought tooth and nail my entire political life to ensure that all of you have both political and economic independence. I don’t hate white people, no, not at all. What I hate is their thinking that they are better than us; that they can just come to our country and take our resources and our land, and tell us what to do. To that, I say no. Today, I am happy that almost all the land is in black hands. “It is up to you to use the education I gave you to develop the land so it is productive so you can feed yourself. One thing I am proud of is that I worked hard to ensure our natural resources and our land was given back to its rightful owners: you the black people of Zimbabwe.
“Go to other countries in Africa. Right here just across the Limpopo, in South Africa, Mandela sold out and gave all the land and economy to the whites. The blacks in South Africa will be slaves to white South Africans forever. As long as the land is not in the hands of its rightful owners, the Africans, the black man will continue to suffer in his own land. The real wealth is now in your hands, I wrestled it away from the white people who came to steal it from you. Yes, the world was angry at me and punished the whole country with sanctions, but I don’t care because I know I was doing the right thing. I was empowering my people – You,” he wrote.
Despoiled of its land through a series of racial colonial measures, Zimbabwe at independence inherited a gross skew in land ownership. A small, reclusive white settler population of 4,000 owned nearly half of arable Zimbabwe – the best half at that – with the other half, packing over 10 million black Zimbabweans.
Most audacious and outspoken African leader
During the UN General Assembly in 2015, Mugabe deviated from his prepared remarks and used the UN podium to attack homosexuality, an audacious submission which further endeared him to the hearts of several Africans who held the view that same-sex marriage was an anti-African culture which the west must stop marketing to the continent.
Although Mugabe’s remarks were greeted with laughter from the audience, he ignored them as he went on to criticize western nations’ “double standards” and attempts to “prescribe ‘new rights’ that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions and beliefs”. More than many other African leaders, Mugabe draws cheers across the continent, while in western lore he has been a terrorist, a Marxist ideologue, bloodthirsty tyrant, stereotypes that he alone on the continent has been able to mock and laugh off.
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“If standing for my people’s aspirations makes me a Hitler,” he once said, “let me be a Hitler a thousand times.” Speaking at the national shrine in August last year during a burial ceremony, Mugabe said he had asked an African National Congress (ANC) minister why the whites still held so much power in South Africa. “I asked one ANC minister how come the whites have been left with so much power, and he said it was because of your friend Mandela. That was an ANC minister who was saying that…” Mugabe said. Born on February 21, 1924, into a Catholic family at Kutama Mission northwest of Harare, Mugabe was described as a loner, and a studious child known to carry a book even while tending cattle in the bush. After his carpenter father walked out on the family when he was 10, the young Mugabe concentrated on his studies, qualifying as a schoolteacher at the age of 17.
Mugabe was an intellectual who initially embraced Marxism, enrolled at Fort Hare University in South Africa, where he met many of southern Africa’s future Black Nationalist leaders. After teaching in Ghana, where he was influenced by founder president Kwame Nkrumah, Mugabe returned to the then Rhodesia, where he was detained for his nationalist activities in 1964 and spent the next 10 years in prison camps or jail. During his incarceration, he gained three degrees through correspondence. His four-year-old son by his first wife, Ghanaian-born Sally Francesca Hayfron, died while he was behind bars. Ian Smith, the Rhodesian leader denied him leave to attend the funeral.
After his release from prison in 1974, Mugabe took control of one wing in the guerrilla war for independence – the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and its armed forces. After assuming office, he initially won international plaudits for his declared policy of racial reconciliation and for extending improved education and health services to the black majority, which was not the case before he came to power. It was the seizure of white-owned farms nearly two decades later that would complete Mugabe’s transformation from darling of the west into an international outcast.
NATHANIEL AKHIGBE
