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Robert Mugabe: seperating myth from reality
By Jethro
Mpofu
IT IS the
prophetic Reggae music guru, Robert Nesta Marley, who sang some lyrics
to the point that “you can fool some people sometimes, but you
cannot fool all the people all the time.”
For a long time now Robert Mugabe has been fooling some Zimbabweans, some Africans and some entities within the global community by pretending to be a gallant African statesman of the Nkrumah model.
In various regional and global platforms, the president, through his long speeches, has been painting a picture of himself as a valiant pan-Africanist who will stop at nothing to defend Zimbabwean and African economic and political interests that are continuously being threatened by western imperialism.
I think, in the interest of Zimbabwe’s recovery from the current economic and political decay, the time has come for the democratic forces in Zimbabwe and beyond to know and understand Mugabe for what he is and not what him and his backers want to claim.
I posit in this short contribution to explode a few myths and confront a few falsehoods that are being scattered around by Mugabe and his prefects claiming that he is a good old wise leader who deserves to rule Zimbabwe until Amen. I also wish to insist that the year 2008-or-never is the time that all democratic forces in Zimbabwe and beyond should mobilise all their resources, energies and focus and ensure that Mugabe comes face to face with history when he is democratically and constitutionally voted out of office by angry men and women of Zimbabwe.
At the latest United Nations general assembly, Mugabe took his criticism of western imperialists to poetic heights. He lambasted the leaders of the west for perpetrating evil against the people of Africa. Ordinarily, there is nothing wrong or sinister with an elected African leader making his contribution to the long struggle against the evil of western economic and political expansionism at a United Nations platform.
In Mugabe’s case, it is painfully paradoxical and rudely ironic that standing on the mass graves of more than 30 000 victims of his Gukurahundi genocide, he pretends before the world that he loves Africans. It is also important for us to remember that this man is standing not on the shoulders of Zimbabweans but on the tears of many Gukurahundi orphans and dispossessed victims of the cruel operation Murambatsvina. So, before Mugabe can represent Africans at the United Nations level, he must first prove his love and respect for African lives at local level. We must not be fooled.
There is also a falsehood that is being peddled in some uninformed African corners that Mugabe is the African statesman who restored the land in Zimbabwe to the natives. The merchants of this falsehood claim that Mugabe is an African liberator who liberated colonised commercial land and used it to economically empower the indigenous people. This is a lie that smells to the high heavens.
| "The silent and angry Zimbabweans will not March or sing songs but they will vote next year" |
| JETHRO MPOFU |
What Mugabe did in Zimbabwe, which no sane African leader should emulate, is that he violently and disorderly seized land from white commercial farmers. He then partitioned it out and parceled out pieces of land to his supporters and cronies in Zanu PF to buy political support and votes for himself. The historical and spiritual Zimbabwean heritage of land has been reduced to an object that is used to bribe individuals and communities for Mugabe’s partisan political goals. At the end of the day, whilst Mugabe continues to pretend to be a Zimbabwean national hero, the truth is that through his partisan and sectoral policies and habits, the man has reduced himself to a Zanu PF party hero and not a national political icon.
Mugabe also loves to market the falsehood that Zimbabweans are now leading far happier economic and political lives than they used to enjoy during the life and times of Ian Smith in Rhodesia. He is always imploring Zimbabweans to be electorally grateful to him and his party by voting Zanu PF, the party that he says liberated Zimbabwe. Under normal African circumstances, it is really important for African men and women to celebrate independence from colonialism.
What Mugabe is not innocent of in the Zimbabwean political and economic landscape is that his poor and primitive economic policies and his bad political practices have impoverished and reduced Zimbabweans to the embarrassing position of dearly missing Rhodesia, which is a national shame. In fact, Mugabe must be told that as opposed to being an icon of African independence, he has worked overtime to give African Independence a very bad name. It is sad and shameful that there are ordinary Zimbabweans who now long for and miss the colonial and slavish economic and political times.
All the political actors in Zimbabwe who differ with Mugabe on his chaotic land reform programme and most of his racist propensities are brutally labeled unpatriotic sell-outs who are puppets of the west intent on reversing the “gains” of independence. He is quick to deal violently with his real and imagined opponents. However, if the truth be told, Mugabe himself has many questions to answer concerning unholy relations with some western powers.
During the 1980s when ZAPU supporters were being slaughtered like goats at Christmas, the then western governments said nothing and did nothing to oppose or to condemn, let alone to sanction Mugabe for the genocidal operation that he executed in Matabeleland. It left Zimbabwe a painfully divided country, which is exactly what heroic statesmen do not do. There was a loud conspiracy of silence from the western corners and Mugabe went on with his operation as if even God had gone on leave. At the time Mugabe had secured the economic and political interests of the westerners in Zimbabwe and he was their man while Joshua Nkomo, who at time was talking about “land to the tillers”, was sent scampering from pillar to post in fear for his dear life.
Before Mugabe labels others puppets and pawns of the west, he really needs to check his own record in that direction. Those who are calling Mugabe by all sorts of heroic names and glorious labels are actually the enemies of Zimbabwe and also the enemies of Mugabe himself because they mislead him.
The once booming Zimbabwean economy is now at an advanced stage of decomposition as Zimbabweans have been reduced to paupers. The education sector, as important as it is, has collapsed to sorry levels. The essential health sector has also collapsed as Zimbabweans die in their thousands of curable ailments only because the doctors have gone to the Diaspora to escape poverty. Basic drugs are not in stock as our government channels funds to buying guns, bullets bombs, baton sticks and anti-riot tankers.
As we talk, Mugabe has concretely ruined the Zimbabwean economy and collapsed the essential education and heath sectors, so those who think Mugabe is a good investment for Zimbabwe are actually merchants of myths and falsehoods who must urgently be told to go to hell or somewhere near there. These are the enemies of Zimbabwe whose work must soon come to an end.
There is another myth and falsehood that is being sold and bought in some Zanu PF circles and in some civic society groups that Mugabe will romp to victory come 2008. This falsehood has been circulating for some time as Mugabe and his supporters pathetically try to imitate the Jacob Zuma movement in South Africa by putting up pretences that Mugabe has crowds behind him. They have hired some persons to march across towns and have even tried to reinvent mathematics by claiming that thousands who march with them are millions.
The truth is that Mugabe faces defeat in next year’s elections. The hired support that Mugabe has displayed is totally what he has and is not enough. The silent and angry Zimbabweans will not March or sing songs but they will vote next year. To assume that the democratic forces of Zimbabwe are doing nothing about the economic and political conditions of Zimbabwe except to be spectators of the marches and listeners of long speeches from Zanu PF is to but practice in political somnambulism. All the conditions and signs on the Zimbabwean political atmosphere point to Mugabe’s defeat.
Another falsehood is that the whole of Zanu PF and government are 100% behind Mugabe. The truth is that Mugabe has disgruntled many presidential and other hopefuls in Zanu PF. They will not shout about it or sing it out. They will even join the marches and utter some solidarities yet the truth is that there are many hearts and minds within the leadership ranks of Zanu PF who after the much awaited Mugabe endorsement at the extra ordinary congress at the weekend, will join together with other Zimbabweans in the opposition and the civic society to create a new Mugabe free Zimbabwe.
I forward that Mugabe has never been and he will not be a genuine pan-African liberator, he has many innocent Africans below the soil. Mugabe cannot be a genuine representative of African economic and political interests at global level; he has injured and wounded the African people that he leads at local level. He has impoverished them and used the historical Zimbabwean heritage of land to buy votes and cement his partisan interests and has divided the Africans in Zimbabwe almost beyond repair. He has killed the economy of Zimbabwe and has in the past conspired with western forces against the economic and political interests of the Africans in Zimbabwe. Him alone has reversed the gains of independence.
It is for that reason that I humbly suggest that all Zimbabweans, Africans and others must be very much careful to separate reality from pretences and the democratic forces in Zimbabwe must take it as a challenge to consign Mugabe to where he belongs -- to the dustbins of history.
Jethro Mpofu is a political activist who writes from Bulawayo. He
is contactable at bayethej@yahoo.com
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