Mandaza: the pitfalls of supping with devil

Mandaza: the pitfalls of supping with devil

• Zimbabwe's small minded rulers

• Mugabe cornered by events out of his control

WHEN so many national systems malfunction as has been the case in Zimbabwe over the last several years, closeness to the ruling authority is one way of surviving and thriving. With an inflation rate of several hundred percent, business smarts alone are no longer any guarantee of keeping one’s enterprise alive. If you intend to farm or run a business without preferential access to credit, foreign exchange or fuel at a time all these services and commodities are in short supply, you might as well forget it.

Amidst all these impediments to business as usual, a promising area of activity has been to get as close to the inner circles of the Mugabe regime as possible. As a member of the regime or supporter in good standing, you are cushioned from the deprivations many Zimbabweans experience as the country is raped by its rulers. There are expropriated farms to be had for nothing. There is preferential access to the little fuel that comes in and can be had at the official prices. Many of those who got expropriated farms are senior members of the regime, as are many of those who have outstanding loans ostensibly taken for farming purposes but went to purchase various luxury goods.

Being in good standing with all its many benefits mainly means being unquestioningly loyal to Mugabe, his government and never disagreeing with any of its pronouncements or actions. This is a lot to ask in a country that has experienced such sudden and such steep decline under the poor stewardship of Mugabe. One must close one’s eyes and ears to the painful and obvious evidence of national decline that is all around in exchange for the relative comfort of the Mugabe blanket of patronage.

Many people from all walks of life in Zimbabwe have chosen to make this pact with the devil. A position with an official car or house is a huge inducement to be quiet and obedient in an economy that has been so ruined that even these ordinary things are out of reach of the overwhelming majority of people through their own means.

"Is it really possible that a politically savvy person like Mandaza did not understand how the game of patronage is played? You are only protected as long as you scrupulously toe the line"

CHIDO MAKUNIKE

But staying in the regime’s good books is not as straightforward and simple as it might first seem, as many have found out to their chagrin and ruin. As the regime becomes ever more alienated from a disaffected population that has seen their prospects shockingly diminish over a few years, it also becomes more paranoid and repressive. We usually see this in its vicious reactions to its large and growing band of critics at home and abroad. But even in the inner circle, the price of admission and retention keeps rising as the paranoia keeps going up in proportion to the worsening conditions in the country.

Whereas before a certain amount of diversity of opinion was tolerated in the inner circle, now even mild disagreement is beaten back with a sledgehammer. The regime goes to ridiculous extents to try to retain the façade of unanimity, afraid that even mild criticism might light the fuse to the powder keg of discontent that is Zimbabwe at the moment.

Consider the case of Ibbo Mandaza, academic of note, newspaper publisher and strong supporter of the Mugabe government. Mandaza for a long time was allowed to walk the fine line between being an out and out member of the system and having a semblance of intellectual and political distance from the system. So while he made no secret of being a supporter of the system, he was also for a long time able to pose as an independent agent who would sometimes mildly disagree with and criticize some of its excesses. For a while he was arguably fairly successful at performing this difficult balancing act. He retained his credentials as an independent academic, political commentator and businessman. But he was also clearly close to the ruling regime, sitting on the boards of government-linked companies, being a favoured commentator by the government media, appearing here and there in the presence of Mugabe or some other high official.

But as the economy sank inexorably it became harder to maintain any illusions of real independence. While on the one hand access to loans to keep one’s tottering business empire would have certainly been eased by closeness to the centre of power, it was at the cost of being further beholden to it. Further credit and protection from foreclosure of non-performing loans required more obedience to the ruling authority’s line. As the overall economic conditions plus the antipathy of many Zimbabweans to his closeness to ZANU-PF and the government conspired to make one’s business enterprises an unsustainable debt trap, it became increasingly difficult to take even a softly independent position on any issue. Despite Mandaza’s valiant efforts to walk the delicate tightrope he had done for some time when his business enterprises seemed to be performing and when there seemed hope that he could pay off his debts and turn his businesses around, it became clear that this was increasingly a pipe dream.

Loans and other concessions that delayed the wolves breaking down the door and gobbling up Mandaza’s publishing business increasingly came with unpalatable strings attached. One may have huffed and puffed at the impositions of board members who doubled as spies and spinners for the ruling authority, but what could one do? They might have initially posed as friends and kindred spirits, not seeming like such difficult conditions for tenuously clinging on to one’s business empire. But they increasingly tired of the pretence of being non-political shareholders as Mandaza tried to hold on to the delusion of independence. Whereas at one time his occasional, mild editorial and political chiding of the system actually helped to give the semblance of political plurality in Zimbabwe, in the new more hostile environment the Mugabe regime saw no reason for allowing a now thoroughly financially and politically beholden Mandaza any latitude.

So now poor Mandaza has been booted out of the publishing company he founded by its board. He is understandably beside himself with fury and indignation, appealing to the High Court against his suspension and protesting that he cannot be removed from a company in which he claims to be the sole proprietor. But regardless of what the official company papers said about ownership, was he in reality still in control, or had he long ago mortgaged that ownership and control? Is it really possible that a politically savvy person like Mandaza did not understand how the game of patronage is played? You are only protected as long as you scrupulously toe the line and as long as you are considered to be useful to the grand design of the Mugabe regime.

Apart from Mandaza’s heavy and worsening debt profile that was always an albatross around his neck, Mugabe has no more use for fence sitters. He has accepted that the reputation of his government is irretrievably destroyed, so there is nothing to be gained from having media outlets that are supportive from a relatively safe distance. For instance, Mandaza’s expressed misgivings about the cruel, disastrous national “clean up” campaign by Mugabe’s regime may have been tolerated in years gone by, but I think in the new paranoid, less tolerant environment the regime asked itself why it had to put up with even that gentle criticism from someone it arguably pretty much owned, even if Mandaza himself did not seem to realize it! He kept acting like the relatively free commentator, academic and businessman of old when in reality the regime had him by the balls, ready to squeeze and induce extreme pain whenever it felt the time was right!

I take no pleasure in the fall of Mandaza, even though to me it has long been predictable. His newspapers featured perspectives on the African condition that were not always popular but that needed to be heard. They feature long and deep contemplative treatises on various important subjects that no other newspapers in Zimbabwe would give the time and space to. They often reminded us that we sometimes get too shrill in our positions on various issues of national import. And both in his commentaries and the general thrust of his papers, I never doubted that Mandaza was a patriot who genuinely wanted the best for Zimbabwe and was anguished by the selling out of the revolution by the rulers.

But for all these positives, Mandaza inexcusably kept on supporting Mugabe when it was no longer tenable to do so, whether on ideological, intellectual or political grounds. This is important because while most of those who pledge allegiance to the system today with all its failures and contradictions do so out of sheer self interest, Mandaza had always claimed to do so for reasons of principle. This became increasingly difficult to justify as Mugabe veered ever further from the great promise of a new dawn that was the promise and hope of majority rule in 1980.

The take-home lesson of Mandaza’s sad experience? There are many. One of them is that the cost of going to bed with an evil regime like Mugabe’s is unacceptably high. It would have been better for Mandaza to have bitten the bullet and faced commercial reality in regard to his business empire but kept his integrity intact, than to have bought time by making accommodations with a system that he surely must have seen had gone way off track many years ago. That same system that he made apologies for long after it could be justified has been the instrument of his fall. Many less smart and less substantial personalities who made the same pact with the devil and then thought they could outwit him have suffered Mandaza’s fate. It is a pity that a brilliant, cerebral analyst like Mandaza did not foresee the same fate befalling him.

It seems pitiful and futile for Mandaza to appeal for relief from his political travails to a court whose members may be even more compromised by patronage than he was. But if he somehow survives the noose with which the Mugabe regime has strung him high in preparation for a show lynching to humiliate him and serve as a warning to others, I hope he will have learnt to try to keep faithful to the true ideals of independence and majority rule, rather than go to bed with those who claim to champion them while shamelessly betraying them.

Intellectual, academic and ideological honesty requires no less.

Mandaza has often brilliantly written about how the African middle class and intelligentsia have been seduced into forsaking those ideals for small, petty material rewards from the state. He has often encouraged those of the relatively privileged in Africa to judge how our societies are doing by higher criteria than whether a tiny minority of us can drive luxury cars or live in grand mansions. We are not doing well if we do so in crumbling, dysfunctional nations. How ironic that the great Mandaza would seem to have fallen victim to a cruel variation of the trap he has often warned nascent, post-independence African societies about!

Many others of you enjoying prominence and “doing well” in the regime of Mugabe at the moment despite knowing better and throwing your lot with the oppressed people of Zimbabwe, beware, Mandaza’s sad fate may yet befall you! That luxury car, big house on the hill, lofty position or other perk of patronage in a rotten dispensation may not seem like such a good trade off for your soul when you make a wrong step and the devil who you think is your friend today cuts you down and gets his pound of flesh. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Chido Makunike is a social commentator and a New Zimbabwe.com columnist based in Harare. He also has a weekly column in the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper
CONTACT CHIDO: chidomakunike@yahoo.com
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