Mugabe: A Continent’s Disgrace

 By

 Phil Tam-Al Alalibo

At a time when the rest of the world is inching towards democracy and free market economy, at a time when the world, including African countries, (for example, neighboring Botswana and Namibia) are basking in economic success, the great warrior of Zimbabwe, the bush fighter, the gladiator of Zimbabwean politics in the last twenty-seven years, the final arbiter in all matters great and small, the alpha and omega of Zimbabwean politics, the conqueror, the immutable Emperor Robert Gabriel Mugabe, eighty-three years old, is still firmly edged in his antiquated, sorrowful and utterly unprogressive wont, a stance that has taken his landlocked country to the precipice of anarchy, starvation and total economic ruination.

With inflation rates souring higher than an ambitious eagle can ever sour, the highest the world is yet to see at 1700 percent and still climbing, Zimbabwe, formerly, Ian Smith’s Rhodesia, with its affluent capital then named Salisbury, once, in time past, the envy of Africans for its economic vitality, promise and hope, is hardly a shadow of its former glory. For this, Zimbabweans have their visionless, avaricious and rapacious leader to thank for unilaterally destructing what was a fledging country with his bankrupt and perilous policies.  

In 1980, when he assumed power after a bloody war that sent thousands of Nigerian soldiers, fighting on the side of justice into their grave, Mugabe was hailed as the new savior, the custodian of African hope, the one to lead the southern African region not only against apartheid South Africa, but to a new plateau of political and economic buoyancy. Many were hopeful and expected the best from this visionary and purposeful leader who had the peoples’ interest at heart or so it was thought. But as the years rolled by, the substance of this man became painfully apparent as the promise faded like the roasting sun of the landlocked country replaced by despair, despondency and hopelessness.  Much to our chagrin, Zimbabwe today is beclouded with economic hardship of untold proportion; AIDS devastating much of the population and hunger killing those that escape the AIDS scourge.

Indeed, the story of Mugabe is a grievous one and gives a lurid account of the ill-fortunes of a continent. Where do we begin with his intransigency? On what page of this sad catalogue of events do we begin? How do we tell the ghastly story of economic decimation and political horror that has since become the lot of this country? Do we begin from his arbitrary and reckless ejection of white farmers in an ambitious and failed land reform program without any corresponding plans to replace the colossal loss of food production that was to result from his action? Is it the equally impetuous and brash demolition of homes in Harare and the surrounding areas, an action that has rendered more than 700,000 hardworking Zimbabweans homeless? Is it the systematic murder of more than twenty thousand Zimbabweans over the years deemed as political opponents? Or, is it the repressive laws, corruption and wanton disregard for human rights that has driven the opposition into hiding?

   Dreaming of new ways to repress Zimbabweans   

It should be noted that with seven university degrees and the benefit of speaking five languages, Mugabe still resides under the canopy of paranoia even as he is sheerly devoid of any progressive ideas, believing there is a gay conspiracy against him. What has reduced this once fierce bush fighter to a weakling old man who now fears a gay conspiracy? Only yesterday, March 11, 2007, his security forces killed an unarmed civilian and arrested the main opposition leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Mr. Morgan Tsvangirai, who was reported to have been beaten while in police custody. Here is a man who has since ran out of steam; here is a man whose delusions have driven him to the edge of political desperation. Here is a man whose insatiable thirst for power continues unabated even as his popularity has since dwindled like his country’s fortunes; this is the type of pervasive leadership that is rampant on the continent.

A few weeks ago, I read the story of a Zimbabwean writer, Chenjerai Hove, hounded into exile to Norway by the old and feeble Mugabe.Unable to withstand the conscience of a people, unable to hear tales of the horrors of his regime, Mugabe first attempted to silence the writer with material inducements as is characteristic of all dictators. But when it became obvious that not all can be bought, when it became obvious that there are some in whose veins the blood of consciousness and humanity still flows, he revealed his true nature and extended his fangs to repress freedom of speech. And this method has been systematic in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe where many of the country’s intellectuals and political opponents, including his main rival, the late Joshua Nkomo of the Zimbabwean African Peoples’ Union (ZAPU), and of the Ndebele ethnic group, (Mugabe is a Shona, the predominant ethnic group) have been imprisoned, murdered or driven into exile.

It appears that common sense is not common in Mugabe’s regime and this is further indicative of vacuous leadership bequeathed the country’s citizens. Only a few weeks ago, the state voted millions of dollars to celebrate his 83^rd birthday, this, coming against the backdrop of a declaration that he would seek tenure elongation and would not step down until further notice. And if one may ask – what exactly does Mugabe have to offer his people? What new ideas does he have to offer that has not been offered in the last 27 years? Is there any well-meaning leader who will waste millions on his birthday, inviting guests from around the world when his countrymen continue to starve in the midst of a rampaging AIDS epidemic and an out of control unemployment rate of more than 70 percent. Indeed, as His Excellency sleeps, Zimbabwe goes to hell in a hand basket and this, invariably, provides the metaphor for all that is wrong with Zimbabwe and much of Africa.

Even on the personal front, Mugabe has shown not to be a man of enviable character, far from being a role model for the younger generation. Married to Sally, a Ghanaian native, stricken with cancer, Mugabe could not wait for her to depart this earth before tangling with his 34-year old secretary, Grace, more than forty years his junior, who now bears the title of First Lady. With such men of questionable character still holding sway on the continent we cannot expect any progress, we cannot expect the continent to be on equal footing with the Southeast Asian tigers. Like all dictators before him, Mugabe is traveling the perilous road of political perdition with reckless abandon. Even as a court in Ethiopia has pronounced life sentence on his contemporary, Mengistu Haile Mariam, who ironically is seeking refuge in Zimbabwe, for his crimes against the Ethiopian people, even as Charles Taylor prepares to account for his own crimes against humanity, even as Abacha was impeached by death without notice, even as Idi Amin of Uganda died in a strange land in destitute, even as Mobutu of Zaire died a miserable death amidst his wealth, so will this unrepentant and barren dictator account for his horrendous stewardship to the Zimbabwean people, some day, very soon.

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The author can be reached at alalibo@gmail.com

Robot  Villager

# 1 ...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 12.03.2007 17:15

DoubleWahala  Villager

# 2 The problem really, is not Mugabe, per se. The problem rests with Africans generally. We are scared of dying for our beliefs. Once a critical mass* of Africans is able to overcome this fear, we will begin our journey to responsible governance. Take the Arabs for instance, rightly or wrongly, they've been able to give the West a run for their money, because their critical mass is not scared of death; How do you respond to an enemy who chooses to blow himself up, just so that he can kill you, too? When we become more proactive about our collective destiny, then, and only then will these goons begin to take the masses seriously. Until then, the likes of Mugabe, et al. will reign supreme. *Critical mass, in this context, means just enough number of people that can make a huge impact. DW Posted by DoubleWahala| 12.03.2007 17:56

akuluouno  Villager

# 3 Dear Phil, Thanks for your expose on Mugabe whom I think gained much noteriety for daring to address the issue of who owns the land, a question which arose immediately after the WW II and which Pan Africanists warned far then would implode in the future. The illicit beneficiaries then were British farmers who usurped over 90 per cent of the arable and most fertile land in Southern Rhodesia as Zim was then known leaving the indigenes with only 5 per cent of parched earth to live on. However this is without prejudice to other issues you raised bordering on RM's personality which we shall talk about when we meet in Phillipi. Be that as it may you may also like to add the likes of Yahaya Jammeh, ( the HIV/AIDS healer-King of Gambia), Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, the Eyadema Clan, Omar Bashir of Sudan, the never say die Lansana Conte, Cameroun's Paul Biya and our own Father might share in the Gold medal award of our continet's disgrace if you look into it critically. :smile: :smile: :D :D :D Posted by akuluouno| 12.03.2007 18:01

Shoko Loko Bangoshe  Villager

# 4 We are scared of dying for our beliefs. Beliefs, DoubleWahala? What beliefs? I don't think the idea of 'Africanism' is as powerful or compelling for Africans as Islam is for Muslims. Posted by Shoko Loko Bangoshe| 12.03.2007 18:29

Auspicious  Villager

# 5 A damning verdict from Phill Tam-Al Alalibo - and a just one too! While others have simply chosen to overlook his current sins for his past struggles for Zimbabwe's independence and his later land reform mantra, some of us have harped on it for so long now, that Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the biggest stumbling block to the Zimbabwean people's true emancipation. Most of Mugabe's supporters simply like to point out that his decision to sieze those white farmers' lands is his albatross; saying that the white man is only punishing him and his people for daring to demand what is theirs. They forget to also point out the fact that Mugabe is also a desperate power monger, who long before he decided to finally act and sieze lands from the white farmers in Zimbabwe, stopped at nothing to amass power in that common egomaniacal way that most African leadeers are wont to do. Over the years, he has moved from being a Prime-Minister to become a President, in an effort to consolidate his hold on power, bullying everyone in the way of achieving his clandestine objectives. The average Zimbabwean has little or no rights today - infact he or she has much fewer rights today than he or she had under the foreigners who colonized them for the longest time. They cannot choose who they want to lead them or for how long he shall rule them; they cannot protest the injustice in their land without being beaten like animals; neither can they dare question Mugabe's authority. And when some of us complain, others love to shout us down and make insinuations about our ignorance and inability to think without the aid of western media outlets like BBC or CNN. I wish they would at least give us the benefit of doubt of possessing the simple intelligence needed to seperate facts from bunkum. CNN or BBC may talk all they want or hoodwink us all they want, but there are some things that even a daft child can see and tell. Just as it is laughable to have a Babangida championing the cause of democracy in Nigeria, it is ridiculous for the man in whose grips Zimbabweans have been for 27 years to talk of emancipating them. Examples of just struggles abound across the world for people to learn from: you don't make people who are morally unfit the champions of your struggles! Had Martin Luther King been a brute or a sadistic egoist, the dreams he had for the black America he fought for and died for would never have come to pass the way it did - unless someone cleaner took it upon himself to champion the struggle. Same goes for other leaders who laid down their lives for their struggles across the world; they all were morally presentable to their people - they didn't have a record of initimidation or suppression of others' rights. And that won them supporters from amongst their fellow people and even amongst those who persecuted them. It was US presidential hopeful Barak Obama who said not too long ago in Selma, Alabama, that the black man must first heal himself - get off the couch and polish up his image et al - before people can take him serious. When a man like Robert Mugabe champions anybody's struggle, no matter how just that cause is, that cause is bound to be slow to yeild (if at all it yields) the kind of result those who fight for it want to see. This is because Mugabe's name and confirmed reputation is a terrible blight on that struggle - it is a dark shadow over the cause. Zimbabweans need to tell Mugabe to get out of their way as they fight for land re-distribution and other rights on their own. He is old anyways; at 83 what does he want for God's sake?!? Send him packing, Zimbabwe, and find from amongst you, decent men and women who treat you like humans to fight on your behalf! Auspicious. Posted by Auspicious| 12.03.2007 18:31

planet1899  Villager

# 6 Auspicious, yours appears even more damning....hopefully the message is clear to that dictator in Harare. Posted by planet1899| 12.03.2007 18:55

DoubleWahala  Villager

# 7 =Shoko Loko Bangoshe;160931>Beliefs, DoubleWahala? What beliefs? I don't think the idea of 'Africanism' is as powerful or compelling for Africans as Islam is for Muslims. SLB, it is the 'belief' that we deserve better, and nothing less. "Africanism" has nothing to do with this. DW Posted by DoubleWahala| 12.03.2007 19:03

truthsayer33  Villager

# 8 this essay is ill-informed Nigerian troops did not fight for Zimbabwe's independence. Mugabe is in trouble because he dared to challenge white settler interests.His country is facing punitive western sanctions...what I can't understand is why the leader of the opposition who represents the poor masses is so fat...how many meals a day is he getting from the CIA? Please read the Lancaster House agreement if you want some background on Mugabe. Posted by truthsayer33| 12.03.2007 19:23

ithinkbetter  Villager

# 9 =DoubleWahala;160923>The problem really, is not Mugabe, per se. The problem rests with Africans generally. We are scared of dying for our beliefs. Once a critical mass* of Africans is able to overcome this fear, we will begin our journey to responsible governance. Take the Arabs for instance, rightly or wrongly, they've been able to give the West a run for their money, because their critical mass is not scared of death; How do you respond to an enemy who chooses to blow himself up, just so that he can kill you, too? When we become more proactive about our collective destiny, then, and only then will these goons begin to take the masses seriously. Until then, the likes of Mugabe, et al. will reign supreme. *Critical mass, in this context, means just enough number of people that can make a huge impact. DW abeg, doublewahala/problem=my guru, mak you show me why my poor self go die for my belief and me go follow you die for my belief....i dey beg you oooo, my big brother....:confused1 Posted by ithinkbetter| 12.03.2007 19:24

molue  Villager

# 10 "but there are some things that even a daft child can see and tell" How true Auspy! Even the daftest child can see that there are 2 issues here: 1. That RM is not the best of leaders neither is he exemplary 2. That the land reform instituted is the best thing to have happened to landless black Africans in their own God-given corner of this earth. The problem with your position is to claim that RM does not have "moral" highground in instituting those land reforms. No one is turning a blind eye to the corruption and evil endemic in Zimbabwe, that can and will be dealt with in due cause hopefully, by your "approved" leader because RM will not live forever. Far from blaming Zimbabwe's woes solely on the "West", some of us are highlighting the not-so-obvious-invisible hand/policies/conspiracies and that, my dear Auspy is a major contributing factor. Robert Mugabe like others before him dare to take on the Big boys!!!! Molue Posted by molue| 12.03.2007 19:32

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