Mugabe’s current `Contradictions’
Robert Mugabe has been abusing and begging from his real and perceived enemies in equal and bewildering measure recently: `Go to Hell!’, he raves but his call for a blanket amnesty for his suborned security forces whose violence has been directed at so many of his own innocent people, are cases in point. His apparently schizoid state of mind (an industrious, would-be etymologist friend tells me that a split personality is more accurately described as dementia praecox) is more understandable if it is remembered by older observers that his greatest `contradiction’ (one of his favourite words) came almost immediately after Independence in early 1980. That was when he told Zimbabweans that all would be forgiven; he clasped his old enemies to his bosom, figuratively speaking, with that great reconciliation speech. The old `enemy’, his white subjects, have since been grievously harmed or driven out of the country. (A few notorious white rogues were spared for a time). White friends and enemies alike have been replaced by legions of new enemies, most of them black.
But that is not the point of this `discourse’ (another of his favourite words). I want to suggest that from Day One that Robert Mugabe has been pushed and pulled from one side to another of the political spectrum by his followers, his beneficiaries (to say nothing of his benefactors: North Korean military trainers spring to mind) from day one. Economically he has never had much understanding of the long-term consequences of appropriating the power of the Reserve Bank, for instance, by appointing his friends to do his bidding. Naturally this made them rich while there was money in the Treasury to be misappropriated. The destruction of Agriculture, his catastrophic move to pacify his so-called war vets needs no further examination. Socially, he never much liked whites (the late Queen Mother excepted) for reasons which are fairly obvious: they were not always very nice to black people like him - clever and ambitious blacks. He has stayed in power for more than thirty years because of his willingness to change tack when his most powerful allies within and from outside his ruling ZANU (PF) have faltered.
Now, in his old age, he grows forgetful, contradicting himself more frequently. The more unforgiving of his enemies, both old and new, wait impatiently for his demise. Many others would wish that he and his henchmen will, like Charles Taylor, see the inside of the International Court for Criminal Justice at the Hague while he lives. The oldest of his enemies hope to live long enough to see it happen. With diamonds now in the Zimbabwe mix, it would be no bad thing if another international celebrity could, for good reasons, this time, bring a long awaited case to the attention of a world preoccupied with too many post-colonial contradictions.
Copyright © 2004 Diana Mitchell
