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Monday 1 December 2008

Mugabe: Power, Plunder and the Struggle for Zimbabwe

How to ruin a country

Robert Salisbury

Nyerere’s remark is interesting. Meredith chronicles very fairly the white man’s land grab in Rhodesia from Lobengula to the 1960s and how effective the land question was as a recruiting sergeant for Mugabe, Sithole and Nkomo. Equally, there are numerous references in both books to the emergency laws the Rhodesian Front introduced after UDI and the often brutal treatment of the ‘terrs’ and those who harboured them by the Rhodesian security forces. However, what shines through in Meredith’s account is how deeply implanted certain basic beliefs were in Rhodesian minds and how courageously Zimbabweans both black and white have resisted ZANU-PF thuggery in defence of their beliefs.

Take the case of Margaret Dongo. Appalled by the scale and the blatancy of the corruption of the ZANU-PF elite, this former ZANU fighter and founder member of the War Veterans’ Association broke with her former associates and stood for Parliament in the 1995 election in the Harare South Constituency. The Registrar-General, the official responsible for the fairness of elections, the caricature figure Tchaiwa Mudede, had, as so often he had elsewhere, rigged the election. An independent inquiry showed that of 33,251 voters’ names on the electoral role, 41 per cent were not genuine. Margaret Dongo took her case to the High Court and in the subsequent by-election, in spite of a concerted campaign of thuggery and vilification, she won.

Hers is only one example of many of the courage, not only of individuals, but of the Zimbabwean electorate, in resisting the government’s brutality. It also shows that there still existed, at least until recently, a functioning judiciary willing to stand up for the rule of law as well as an ingrained faith in the power of fair elections as a force for peaceful change.

These were things which, along with a powerful economy and a tradition of honest and competent administration, were the legacy of Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. They are things that became rare in Africa after the end of the colonial era. No wonder Nyerere told Mugabe he had inherited a jewel: but squander it he did.

Meredith’s account is all the more devastating for the unemotional tone he employs. Particularly gut-wrenching is the account of the massacres in Matabeleland, planned by Mugabe and carried out by the North Korean-trained and specially formed 5th Brigade from 1983-85 and known as ‘Gukurahundi’ or the rain that blows away the chaff. However, almost as chilling as the accounts of brutality by the regime and the thieving by the kleptocracy that ZANU-PF became as soon as it achieved office, is Mugabe’s single-mindedness.

He desires only one thing: power. He bends every sinew to acquire it and then to keep it. His Catholic/Marxist upbringing and his intelligence have prepared him well and he cares not a fig for the misery that he has inflicted on his people. And the horror is very far from over.

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