Chance is missed to humanise Mugabe

Chance is missed to humanise Mugabe

RECENT ARTICLES BY MARY

• Mugabe never makes idle threats

• Enduring famine at the banquet

• Cabinet reshuffle a mockery

• Maze of Mugabe patronage everywhere

• Mudede fiasco shows extent of lawlessness

• The ivory tower dweller and the affable author

• MIC a costly anachronism

• Sexist element in Ncube's harassment

• Mugabe must be stopped

• Regime resorts to more ploys to buy time

• Will Mugabe quit in 2010?

• Zimbabwe has leeches, not scorpions

By Mary Revesai

IF A man is told often enough by enough people for a long enough time that he is the embodiment of perfection – wise, strong, infallible and possibly immortal – he begins to believe it.

For decades, Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe has been used to having people licking his boots and singing his praises. He has relished hearing the Nolan Makombes and Tony Garas of this world comparing him to Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Others like Didymus Mutasa and some church leaders have suggested that Mugabe was anointed by God to rule Zimbabwe for the rest of his life.

He has never found this grovelling embarrassing. Wherever Mugabe has gone, he has seen his portrait gazing down benevolently on his subjects from the walls of buildings, be they government, parastatal, municipal, business or educational establishments. Upon his frequent departures from and arrivals at Harare International Airport, a sea of faces waves him off or welcomes him.

He is used to frenzied and ingratiating singing by men and women resplendent in patriotic garb bearing his portrait. The sound of sirens announcing his ubiquitous, grotesque and fuel-guzzling motorcade are like an addictive drug that he can’t just give up.

Psychologist Charles Horton Cooley described the kind of image a person has of himself as the result of the responses and reactions of others as the ‘looking glass self’ or an idealised picture of oneself.

But as Edgar Tekere’s biography, A Lifetime of Struggle, has shown through revelations about Mugabe’s past, this idealised self-image does not always bear any relation to objective facts. The book, which I have not read, has raised Mugabe’s hackles in a way nothing has ever done before because it has, so to speak, shattered the looking glass through which Zimbabweans, despite their objective experiences and the evidence of their own eyes, are expected to view the man who has controlled their fate for almost 30 years.

And if Mugabe’s plans to cling to power by standing as a candidate in presidential elections next year succeed, Zimbabweans will be expected to endure more deprivation and repression as the octogenarian makes what he knows is a last ditch attempt to impose his idealised legacy on the nation.

Tekere has been crucified by Zanu PF spin doctors and apologists for daring to burst the bubble of Mugabe’s infallibility and invincibility. Those who have read the book have questioned certain things and pointed out Tekere’s own human weaknesses. This is as it should be. The point remains however, that Tekere’s human frailties and whatever inaccuracies, distortions or exaggerations are found in his book, do not detract from the impact of the publication of his biography on Zimbabwe’s body politic. The book has put Mugabe on the defensive in the true sense of the word for the first time because allegations have been made about him by someone from his own party who knew him intimately at the period being spotlighted. This was taboo until now.

Over the years, Mugabe has become an expert at denouncing and attacking perceived enemies, sell-outs, agents of foreign powers or unpatriotic Zimbabweans on behalf of the revolution, his party and government. He has never had to defend his own record and reputation because he had cunningly created the illusion that he was head and shoulders above the rest and therefore beyond reproach in all departments. Hooray to Tekere for forcing him to confront for the first time that this is not so and that like the rest of us, he has human weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

Ironically, if Mugabe’s advisers and propagandists knew what they were doing by keeping their fingers on the pulse of the nation and reading the public mood correctly, they would have seized upon Tekere’s revelations as an opportunity to humanise Mugabe and portray him as a mortal human being like everyone else.

After all, Mugabe is not the first leader in the world to have inconvenient stories from his youth and past surfacing when he is at the pinnacle of political power. His nemesis, United States president George Bush has had to deal with revelations about a drinking problem in his youth and allegations that he and his father belonged to a secret segregationist society. Another U.S. president, Bill Clinton endured an even more fiery baptism of fire when the U.S. congress trawled through his past to reveal numerous extra-marital affairs while gathering evidence for his impeachment in the Monica Lewinsky saga. Even in his retirement, Clinton still has to hear the jibe, ‘I did not inhale’ which refers to his response when a story surfaced during his presidency that he smoked mbanje during his student days at Oxford University in Britain.

Former South African president Nelson Mandela had to grin and bear it when personal details about his marriage to his now ex-wife Winnie were splashed in the media when they divorced and during the reporting of the numerous controversies Winnie has been embroiled in. Former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda had information about his Malawian origins exposed while he was in power. Kurt Waldheim, who served as United Nations secretary general in the 1970s had to find a civilised way to manage the situation when information surfaced that in his youth he had been a member of the SS, the Nazi paramilitary organisation.

The list of world figures who have had secrets from their past exposed in books or the media is endless. It is instructive that when the misfortune befell them none of the figures listed above regarded it as the fire and brimstone, life and death event that Mugabe has turned the publication of Tekere’s book into. He has gone on the warpath and encouraged an official smear campaign against the author. He has enlisted an army of apologists, columnists and the state broadcaster to defend him by spewing venom at Tekere, whose book has made revelations about Mugabe’s love life and marital problems.

He appears, however, to have been most stung by Tekere’s suggestion that he was a reluctant recruit to the liberation struggle contrary to the image he presents of himself today as someone who has never faltered or put a foot wrong. Interestingly, Mugabe has often made mincemeat of opponents like Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change over the issue of their reluctance to join the war of liberation, proving the veracity of the psychological theory of projection as a defence mechanism.

Mugabe has been hopping mad at Tekere because he cannot use brute force to deal with him as he is currently doing to crush dissent following his government’s clampdown on political rallies. The only regrettable thing about Tekere’s book is that it and others chronicling events during the early days of the liberation struggle did not appear earlier.

It is doubtful that if the roles of political luminaries had been subjected to scrutiny by their peers, the creation of larger-than-life cult figures like Mugabe would have occurred. If his advisers were worth their salt they would know that is it futile to ram the details of how Mugabe was “unanimously” anointed to lead Zanu PF more than 30 years ago down the throats of a populace to whom independence is now meaningless because of the repressive governance they are being subjected to.

This time-warped and sanctimonious self-validation means nothing in the prevailing situation.

Mary Revesai is a New Zimbabwe.com columnist and writes from Harare. Her column will appear here every Tuesday

JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
debate@newzimbabwe.com