Ug-Babwe and Zim-Ganda

Question: What's the difference between a duck?
Answer: One of its legs is both the same.

That little riddle makes about as much sense as what is going on in Zimbabwe today.
I am forever searching for some clues which might help Zimbabweans (and the dwindling numbers of concerned Zimbabwe watchers) arrive at an educated estimate of how the country's current crisis will end. Doing a little revision for yesterday's blog I concentrated on Uganda's late 20th century history. I noted a few remarkable similarities in the performance of two post colonial despots, Amin and Mugabe, both of whom started well and then went irredeemably rotten. They will always be as different as a jackal is from a crocodile in their natures and yet leagues apart if you compare their CVs and their style of leadership. Still, their legacies, a litany of lost opportunities will be the same. Examples of the differences between the two men and their disastrous policies are as unhelpful as they are also significant. You can draw no clear conclusions: Amin was a semi-literate professional soldier, Mugabe a highly educated individual who pitched himself into the head of a guerilla army with absolutely no preparation for the job. Neither seemed to understand modern economics. Both developed a hatred of the British: Amin because of the arrogance of British army officers; Mugabe because the British government condemned his land grab. Amin waded in the blood of his enemies, Mugabe finds less violent yet equally tortuous ways of staying in power. Amin betrayed his sponsor, Milton Obote, Mugabe betrayed his fellow nationalist, Joshua Nkomo at the end of their joint but separated struggle against white rule. Amin depended on the support of the military throughout his rule; Mugabe, coming towards the end of his, has to rely on the loyalty of his military chiefs. Both leaders came into power on a wave of popularity - Amin because of the unpopularity of Obote and Mugabe because Zimbabweans were tired of war. Amin ruled by whim because he could not understand the business of government, Mugabe, after his first decade in office came to rule by whim, perverting and manipulating government for his own ends. One most remarkable similarity betweent the two is encapsulated in this quote by Martin Meredith from a defecting Ugandan Finance Minister: ` The government is a one-man show. Impossible decisions are taken by General Amin which ministers are expected to implement. The decisions bear no relationship to the country's available resources'. Another interesting parallel, `When budgets ran out, Amin routinely ordered the central bank to print more currency to `solve' the problem'. Amin's attempt to regain popularity by turning on his Asian population, the bedrock of the country's economic prosperity can be compared with Mugabe's turning on white farmers for similar reasons and with a similar result. Disaster. As in Zimbabwe today, the hopeful African population benefited little while fat cats grew fatter. Strange that in both countries applause was received from other African countries. Meredith concludes `However cruel, capricious and brutal, many of Amin's actions may have seemed in the West, in much of Africa he was regarded as something of a hero. By expelling the Asian community he was seen to be fearlessly asserting African interests'. Sad. But one great difference here lies not in the nature of the leadership but in the nature of the majority of Zimbabweans. They do not applaud their living tyrant. Even his cronies are surreptitiously working at his removal from power. Blood is unlikely, in this writer's opinion, to flow. And that is the great difference between the two countries: not their leaders' destructive policies, but the nature of their people. That is my only remaining hope for Zimbabwe. Her people seem determined, at whatever the cost, to abjure bloodletting. They know it cannot solve their problems.

Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell

That Scottish Idi Amin

So the the spectre of Idi Amin has been raised yet again. I have just read a report on the making of a feature film in Uganda, presenting this latest reincarnation of Africa's number one dead despot - due for release on Friday, January 12. Titled `The Last King of Scotland' and directed by Kevin MacDonald (there's a good old Scottish name) the report has brought one pretty depressing observation to light: Stephen Robinson was rightly perturbed to discover that `The visitor to Uganda soon finds that those who were not directly targeted by his henchmen speak of Amin with a certain pride...After Nelson Mandela, Amin is the most famous contemporary African, and Ugandans seem rather proud that he made their country known to the rest of the world, albeit for the wrong reasons`. I suppose the estimated 300 000 deaths of his countrymen under Amin's despotic rule, coupled with his shocking treatment of his Indian citizens brands him as possibly the most infamous African of modern times. But what has prompted me to ruminate over his history is that I believe Robert Mugabe is giving Idi Amin some strong competition for the premier position among African despots.
Fellow African leaders whose performance is less than salutary are hanging on to a blind pride in Mugabe's performance. Overlooked is his responsibility for the killing, under his rule, of a mere 20,000 fellow Zimbabweans who were dwellers in Matabeleland and who spoke in that Southern part of the country the only African language other than Mugabe's majority MaShona people. If he lives long enough to stand trial for his crimes against humanity, the details of all this will no doubt fascinate future filmgoers. But for now, he and his cronies are still hanging tenaciously on to power while millions of innocent men, women and children, trapped in once-prospering Zimbabwe, face possible death by attrition. The majority throughout Zimbabwe are threatened with rampant disease and, if nothing changes, the prospect of slow starvation. Only because about a quarter of the population have chosen to flee to places where they can earn sufficient cash to remit to families - who would probably die if left unassisted - is there no film footage of Ethiopian-style skeletal babies and stick figured mothers in today's Zimbabwe. And of course there has been no blood-letting for two decades. That would get the world's attention. Mugabe is no buffoon. At a few weeks off 83 he is still the articulate, even eloquent and cunning politician who came from nowhere to head the guerrillas who caused the collapse of white rule in Rhodesia. Yes I know about his past. I consider myself something of of an authority on the details, having been closely acquainted with many of the most worthy of his contemporaries. He was raised a Catholic but like the despotic Hitler, for one example, he had severe psychological problems arising out of his personal health problems and family tragedies and setbacks. Future film-makers will be free to put whatever spin they choose on the details of all that but I am sure that the story of his destruction of a country he claimed to set free will set a whole lot of hares running to prove that he has outdone Amin in the top-despot stakes.
I have more to say about the Amin story as described in the Telegraph report, but not in this blog.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell