 |
|
|
|
Paying
price for making democracy look a stupid idea
All headlines have been cast and cartoons distributed about this leader of a tiny Southern African state. Editors and notable people who haven’t opined on this unyielding octogenarian are certainly in the minority. There
is probably no mailbox, which hasn’t received a joke on
Mugabe. While everyone is aware of these tragedies unfolding in Togo and Sierra Leone it is a shocking fact that they have spilt less ink than that of Zimbabwe. Could
all this outrage be racist drivel marshalled and sponsored by
imperial media houses or it is genuine collective moral outrage
aimed at forestalling savagery? One Ghanaian called Baffour Ankomah has used his magazine, New African, to argue thus. So have his colleagues, David Nyekorach Matsanga, Ibbo Mandaza and many others locally and abroad. They have held seminars and television talk-shows to promote this thinking. Needless to talk about Mugabe who has used every platform and rostrum to chisel this view through.
I reject this thinking. It is a fallacy, which all reason has laughed at. It is a fallacy that I have dissected, overturned, studied and observed but have met with no satisfaction. I have searched high, low, yonder and under. Yes, occasionally, I have met with some moral pointers to our unfair and unfortunate history but just behind I have met with stark and brutal reality, manifesting itself through the bludgeoning of selected unwanted bodies and views. Often times I have met rapacity and sheer thievery. I have seen the mourners of this tragedy branded as brainwashed sell-outs. I have been gob-smacked and choked by efforts to destroy the truth. Despite the fact that it is erected on genuine concerns of the black majority Mugabe’s crusade has failed to stand upright. It won’t. It is a cleft structure with irreparable cavities exposing its rotten inner being. To which all races have hurled a bolt of moral outrage, at which they have spat and against which they have risen up in large numbers. It is this inner and moral weakness which has mobilised so many from across the globe to a common moral platform to jeer at Mugabe. If Mugabe is right then God has been unfair to allow so many wrong minds to lynch one pathetic old man. God would be unfair to make so many resolute and united in their wrongness. Rather
than see a British-sponsored drive to protect racist privilege
in Zimbabwe, I see a humane drive to deflect a continuation of
rapacity and deny it the opportunity to strike the other cheek;
I see an effort to check mindless retribution; I detect an attempt
to stop one man from personalising our collective memory and the
African crisis just to renew his political career and launch selfish
bloody projects.
Here
is the evidence: Mugabe’s strategy is contagious. It is slowly reviving a culture of paranoid and selfish nationalism in some quarters, which in the face of criticism camouflages itself in racist rhetoric and sovereignty shibboleths. This is a culture, which has not only survived beyond the end of the Cold War and survived the emergence of accountable democracies but also has found comfort in its intergenerational outlook as represented in Thabo Mbeki and Olusegun Obasanjo. In
the face of this heinous assault on democratic principles, reckless
stocking of racial fires and callous abuse of “history of
loss” Mugabe wouldn’t have survived this vicious scrutiny
which he finds himself under. Whether fair or not, it is not an
exaggeration to say that his quarrelsome brand of politics led
to this anti-Mugabe media blitz. Mugabe has pursued repression
with colour, irritating words and fanfare. This is what the media
has always been attracted to. So let the ink be spilt. |
|||||||||
By
Mthulisi Mathuthu