Mugabedom, not yet Zimbabwe

Africa’s shame is reading for the 7th time that Robert of 18 April 1980 has succeeded Mugabe (read; Robert Mugabe) in August 2013, (33 years after) as the president of a country of 13.7 million people. Yours comradely together with other African compatriots stormed the British Consulate in 1979 in ABU students’ mass action demanding […]

Africa’s shame is reading for the 7th time that Robert of 18 April 1980 has succeeded Mugabe (read; Robert Mugabe) in August 2013, (33 years after) as the president of a country of 13.7 million people. Yours comradely together with other African compatriots stormed the British Consulate in 1979 in ABU students’ mass action demanding for the immediate independence of Zimbabwe and British respect for the popular votes of ZANU led by Robert Mugabe against the likes of colonialist Ian Smith and his western backers.
  We did participate in that historic legitimate protest for the liberation of Zimbabwean peoples not for an enthronement of a Mugabedom led by a King Mugabe. Even for an unelected monarch 33years seem a long reign! 33years of sorrow, tears and blood under the reign of Mugabe is even a double jeopardy. Mugabe is the real shame of the continent for leaving Zimbabwe with a political choice like Morgan Tsvangirai who is half his age having presided over the political and virtual demise of veritable contenders and great names like Joshua Nkomo, Herbert Chitepo, Josiah Tongogara, Ndabaningi Sithole, Abel Muzorewa, Edgar Tekere, Byron Hove,    Margaret Dongo etc.  I am surprised that my  teacher  Okello Oculi who taught us the virtues of objectivity in social inquiry explained Mugabe’s woes in terms of some conspiracy theories nurtured by the West.
Even Structural Adjustment Prog-ramme (SAP) which the then UK knighted Robert Mugabe willingly plunged Zimbabwe into so as to be accepted when it was fashionable was attributed to the forces opposed to liberation (already won a decade earlier)! In the face of mass opposition by the trade union movement, Mugabe pushed millions into poverty with neo-liberal policies of devaluation, downsizing and subsidy removal. It was a regime of Mugabe’s imposed sanctions against his own people. And that was well before the politically motivated and self-perpetuating strategy of land reforms. But who perpetrated the atrocities in the Matebele land in the ‘90s with the notorious brutality of the North Korean Fifth Brigade and of course their western backers? Of course it was Mugabe who shamed the continent killing opposition members and bullying them into submission rather than engaging them for consensus.
What should worry us is that independent African states courted sanctions not to make a case against bad political behaviour such as serial ‘Mugabe’s brigandship’. It is delightful from Okello’s account that President Obasanjo is not an observer after all, but an active participant in a process characterised by permanent ethnic majorities, voter fatigue and voter apathy and limited political choices. But assuming President Obasanjo’s claim that the election was “fairly fair” is true, is the outcome that permanently produces Mugabe as a permanent winner in country of 13 million people fair?
Indeed we are all witnesses to Zimbabwe’s story which daily and hourly alternates between some thrilling comedy and scaring tragedy or both: tragi-comedy. Yours sincerely thought I had gotten it right when I proclaimed Mugabe as history following 29 March 2008 polls in which the opposition won as many as 105 seats in the 210-seat parliament, leaving ZANU-PF with 93 seats. Watching the 89-year-old president casting his votes again in an apparent no-contest election (opposition was ill-prepared), it was clear that as far as Mugabe was concerned, it was not yet the end of history as we knew it with great statesmen of honour such as Nelson Mandela, President Sam Nujoma of Namibia and President Kennet Kaunda who knew when to bow out when the political ovation was loud. As a matter of fact, as far as Robert Mugabe is concerned, it is the beginning of history of sheer profanity and ‘brigandship’ for which he is fully prepared.
Until recently Mugabe polari-zed the Africa continent and indeed the world either for (in support of the land reform) or against Zimbabwe (for free and fair elections). No thanks to the combined forces of Tony Blair/ George Bush who concealed their racist uncritical support for few white land owners opposing land reform while remaining hard on politics of free and fair elections. But today it is Zimbabwe versus the whole world as Mugabe digs into political isolation against the background of global pressures and Euro-American blackmail in particular.
Former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, the global surviving moral force, once aptly described the unfolding events in Harare as manifestation of tragic leadership failure. Nothing could be more perceptive. Mandela did not elaborate on this but we can imagine that with respect to Zimbabwe, failure of leadership is not peculiar to Robert Mugabe which is crystal clear anyway. The ambiguity and duplicity of African Union to Zimbabwe underscores  failed leadership at conti-nental level. Lacking inde-pendent criteria to assess Zimbabwe (notwithstanding much taunted pair review machinery of NEPAD), AU was once a willing stick of the Gordon Brown and George Bush with which the duo whipped the entire continent into line to condemn the already condemned Mugabe.
When Washington and London sneeze, from Cairo to Cape Town, there is instant climate change! But think about it: the ambiguity of most of the likes of Obasanjo is clearly understandable. With all its imperfections, Zimbabwe elections are certainly better than Kenya’s and Nigeria’s elections under Obasanjo.