90 The EconomistSeptember 14th 2019
B
ooks he trusted. One was usually in his hand in those first,
mostly happy, years as Zimbabwe’s leader. He would be home at
State House by 5.30pm, slamming doors so that his beloved wife
Sally would know to come rushing. They crumpled together on a
low armchair, almost on each other’s laps, she eating custard as he
sipped tea. Then he would drape a long arm round her while turn-
ing with the other the pages of a favourite novel, usually British,
often a Graham Greene.
Written words Robert Mugabe could love. It was real live people
who proved difficult. A shy, surly boy, he sought no friends in Ku-
tama, his village. Later he admitted it frankly: “I lived in my mind a
lot. I liked talking to myself, reciting little poems and so on; read-
ing things aloud to myself.” A loner, he hated scrapping with sticks,
running, boys’ boisterous games, communal life. A brother, Do-
nato, thought him “lazy, just reading all the time”. Even at chores,
in the shade of the bush while snaring birds or tramping in the
dust to herd cattle, he would read. “He held the book in one hand
and the whip in the other. It was a strange thing for all of us to see,”
recalled Donato.
The Irish priest at the Catholic mission in Kutama thought he
had “unusual gravitas” and would “be an important somebody”. He
was at mass daily, most dutifully after his brother, Michael, was
poisoned. Years of teaching study followed: first in Southern Rho-
desia, then at Fort Hare, South Africa, the crucible for so many Afri-
can nationalist leaders, and lastly in Ghana, where he met Sally.
As an African nationalist in Rhodesia, ruled by Ian Smith in the
name of white supremacy, jail was inevitable. His 11 years behind
bars he recalled as a chunk of life pointlessly stolen away. Again,
books sustained him. He acquired seven degrees. As it did for Man-
dela, Nkrumah and Kenyatta, prison also earned him political
credibility. Outdoor activity was harder. In Mozambique after his
release, as his fellow liberation fighters strutted in fatigues, hesweltered in a suit.
Throughout his life, rivals somehow met timely deaths. Cars
were flattened by lorries on remote roads; flames devoured a farm-
house; opponents learned to fear high open windows. Few loved
him. The British sometimes sneered. At Lancaster House in Lon-
don, amid talk of independence and elections, the British foreign
secretary found him “reptilian”, “not human”. At home, voters
thought otherwise. He swept to glorious, genuine victory in the
first free elections in 1980. To the shock and relief of Smith and the
white farmers, he let them stay on, keeping their land if they ab-
stained from politics. Though he had declared himself a Marxist-
Leninist-Maoist, he now preached reconciliation. And the teacher
flourished. Zimbabweans were among the best educated people in
Africa, and evenings at State House saw the prime minister perso-
nally tutoring his staff.
He blamed Britain for all ills, including his country’s complete
economic collapse in the first decade of this century. Inflation
soared to 500trn%; a generation of people fled. The British, he
claimed, had broken their word on paying for land reform. Yet he
hankered for England, London shopping, Savile Row, cricket and
high tea with “Johnny” Major. He was fonder still of royalty, telling
with a twinkle of the queen’s happiness on visits to Zimbabwe.
For all his literary habits, the whip was never far away. In the
early 1980s he turned to North Korea to train soldiers to crush the
main minority tribe, the Ndebele. He admitted his security men
had committed some “excesses” when entire village communities
were burnt in their huts. He denied talk of 20,000 victims and
called himself forgiving—“otherwise I would have slaughtered lots
of people”. The rest of the world did not much notice, or care to
bring him to book. Yet his fear of prosecution for crimes against
humanity may have encouraged him to cling to office, despite his
conviction that only God could remove him.
His rule grew darker, possibly because Sally had died and been
replaced by Grace, an ex-secretary 40 years younger than he was,
even fonder of shops and more ambitious for political power. His
opponents had once been co-opted; now he crushed them. Young
thugs, egged on by him, punished white farmers by taking their
land away. It was given to his friends, “war veterans” like himself,
whether or not they had any idea how to work it. As a farming econ-
omy, Zimbabwe collapsed.Frugality, brutality
He never saw tragedy in his country’s immiseration, only med-
dling by outsiders or vicious threats by rivals. The army and his
Central Intelligence Organisation ensured his grip on power, rig-
ging elections, killing opponents, closing newspapers and wiping
away a generation of bright and tolerant Zimbabweans who could
have led Africa. His people succumbed to hunger, aids, cholera
and despair. Each year he held a more lavish public birthday party,
beaming with delight as he cut a massive cake.
In the end it was the dismissal and flight abroad of his most
trusted lieutenant, Emmerson Mnangagwa, that led to his down-
fall in 2017. Grace had overplayed her hand in having him sacked,
and the army rolled into Harare. The generals glibly insisted this
was not a coup, saying they were dealing with “traitors”. By this,
they did not seem to mean him. But they duly installed Mr Mnan-
gagwa as president.
Asked why people feared him, he said he thought it was “per-
haps because I’m quiet, and also because I believe in what I say.”
His life was mostly frugal: rising early to practise yoga; working
daily at his desk, in his mustard-yellow chair beside a huge map of
the world; nibbling rice and corn meal by hand, the African way. He
showed few of the vices—women, booze, feasts—associated with
the caricature of an African dictator. But he had the usual vanity.
Asked by The Economist, well into his 80s, when he would retire, he
laughed that he would rule until he was “a hundred years old”. The
tragedy for Zimbabwe was how close he got to keeping his word. 7Robert Gabriel Mugabe, hero and destroyer of Zimbabwe,
died on September 6th, aged 95Rule by the whip
Obituary Robert Mugabe