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