Mugabe's sin

Mugabe's sin

• The great ecclesiastical betrayal

• Robert Mugabe: terrorist or liberator?

• A woolly presidential hopeful with a violent streak

• It's all all gloom

• A case of more tombstones than milestones

• Mugabe's Cheka is everywhere, defending the revolution

• The National Vision Document of Suspicious Verses

• Mkapa must deliver us from shadow of fist

• George Charamba: Mugabe's backward front man

• To be liberated from the liberators

• Just what is the meaning of change?

By Mthulisi Mathuthu
(READ MTHULISI'S PREVIOUS ARTICLES)

AN INTERESTING but rather regrettable trend is developing. President Robert Mugabe's supporters are growing bit by bit across the globe.

Former Zambian leaders, Kenneth Kaunda and Frederick Chiluba, and a host of other African nationalists have never hidden their support for Zimbabwe's recalcitrant ruler.

South African President Thabo Mbeki may arguably be counted amongst them. Needless to talk about that Ghanaian journalist Baffour Ankomah whose support for Mugabe suggests all sorts of conspiracies.

It has always been easy to brush aside this line-up on the grounds that it subscribes to the old school mentality. A group of people who have yet to forgive the West for the atrocities it committed against the developing world during the last century.

But there seems to be a change. The support may be assuming an inter-generational aspect.

Recently in Leeds I had a discussion with an energetic young Ugandan lawyer of my age who didn't hide his support for Mugabe's defiance against the West. To him Mugabe is an African hero, a liberator par excellence. In the heat of the argument, more and more guys from Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and Nigeria soon joined in to side with the lawyer.

“Man dat ting which he (Mugabe) did of taking white farms was good man. I like it,” quipped a Nigerian. The whole thing turned emotional when a few more guys from the Middle East, particularly Iran and Iraq joined in.

In bad English, one of them said how sad he was that there were people who thought Mugabe was wrong when all what he did was to “empower” his people.

“You guys must be grateful for this gentleman called Mugabe. These Western people are bad,” the lawyer reminded us. “Bad, bad, bad and bad! Look at what they are doing in Iraq. They are not criticising (Olusegun) Obasanjo and (Yoweri) Museveni of Uganda because they are puppets.”

The whole thing turned into a lecture and it became impossible to chatter a discourse and we soon dispersed to our respective places in the middle of the night.

Later that night, I began thinking about the meaning of all this.

It is interesting to note how most of the people in the developing world fail to link the bad publicity Mugabe is receiving directly with the suffering he has caused to his people. It should also be noted that all this support for the wayward ruler feeds also from the insincerity of the Western leaders whose double standards when dealing with the African leaders is legendary.

Rather than be blinded by the Western double standards to the extent of heaping praises on people of Mugabe's calibre, the African people had better give themselves time to see what damage he has caused to his own people first.

It is no coincidence that the first people to be suspicious about Mugabe's rise to power were the Africans themselves. History has it that after the coup against Ndabaningi Sithole in prison, Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere and his Mozambican counterpart, Samora Machel were reluctant to accept Mugabe as a genuine revolutionary.

His colleagues Edgar Tekere, Enos Nkala and many others were also quick to see how bad and selfish a leader he was. It is interesting to note that all the awards which Mugabe received from a knighthood to honorary degrees were in their large numbers issued by the Western institutions, and not the Africans celebrating the shining of an African patriot.

So all this shows that rather view Mugabe as a victim of Western propaganda, it is essential that we note the fact that there was already enough African scepticism about Mugabe well before CNN and BBC began to excoriate him.

Former South Africa Nelson Mandela's refusal to fully embrace Mugabe even though he had projected himself as an anti-apartheid stalwart was not a side show but a telling gesture from an African icon. It is the same with Desmond Tutu and Wole Soyinka's unyielding stance on Mugabe. All these men are leading African voices whose commitment to things African is known all over the world. It will be hard to imagine they have betrayed Africa by pointing at Mugabe.

The reasons for all this are very clear. Mugabe's ascendancy to the summit of the greasy pole was largely characterised blood spilling and all sorts of sad rumours.

Think of the death of Hebert Chitepo, disappearance of Edson Sithole, death of Tongogara and many other related sad tales.

Today, Mugabe's name is not bad because he seized farms from white people and oversaw the murder of at least 12 white farmers. It is bad because of a carefully crafted programme of subduing the African electorate through Gukurahundi, the shooting of opposition politicians and activists, the arrest and torture of journalists.

The colour of Mugabe's crime is largely black than white and his unpopularity is purely Africa although it is sung more in the Western media. The reason for this has been that there are few or weaker African media voices of global note as compared to the Western institutions.

Occasionally some white casualties have accrued here and there along Mugabe's path but all the way from his prison coup up to today, Mugabe's political prosperity is largely irrigated by black blood.

A panoply of undemocratic laws in our midst has not been deployed to deal with anybody from London but to deal precisely with the people of Muzarabani and Tsholotsho.

Time has come for the African people to judge their people by what they are doing to them. It is therefore clear that to commit ourselves to the Western double standards in trying to redeem ourselves is to flee from the centre of issues and more worryingly, it is to let the real instigators of our suffering run away with murder.

If the Western media is reluctant to condemn the likes of Obasanjo and the veteran Uganda dictator Museveni, we should not use that as a reason to keep quiet about Mugabe.

Nobody will help us unmask Museveni if we ourselves don’t do so now. In the case of Mugabe, it is not like the West has prodded us into condemning him but they have joined us to weep and have made our cries louder. The reality is that there was African tears flowing well before there was any drop of a tear in the farmlands.

Mthulisi Mathuthu is a New Zimbabwe.com columnist. He can be contacted at: thuthuma@yahoo.com
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS