Section:GDN 1J PaGe:8 Edition Date:190907 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/9/2019 17:47 cYanmaGentaYellowblac
- The Guardian Saturday 7 September 2019
8
A
s the armoured
vehicles rolled
in to Harare in
November 2017,
after weeks
of political
fencing and
brinksmanship,
Robert Mugabe could not believe
he had lost. The senior military
leadership who placed the
Zimbabwean president under
house arrest made it clear they were
conducting the politest of coups,
while stressing to the outside world
that it was not a coup at all. It was
merely a corrective action and,
indeed, at its end, with Mugabe’s
resignation , it was still his party,
Zanu-PF, in offi ce.
Mugabe, who has died aged 95,
came to power as a result of the gun- wielded by others, as he himself
never fought in the fi eld – and fell
by those who wielded the gun. And,
as he fell, the true depths of the
economic mire into which he had
Robert Mugabe
Ruthless president of Zimbabwe
once hailed as a beacon of African
liberation who bankrupted
the country he had fought for
It was in prison that he began
his rise in the nationalist ranks.
His militant opposition to white
minority rule in what was then
Rhodesia led to a 10-year jail term in
1964, after the banning of the newly
formed Zimbabwe African National
Union (Z anu). Mugabe refused to
break under pressure – whereas
the Z anu founder and leader,
Ndabaningi Sithole , did, renouncing
subversion and terrorism after
he was sentenced in 1969 for
incitement.
By 1974 Mugabe had taken over as
leader of the imprisoned movement.
Much of his time in prison was spent
reading for external degrees from
universities in London and South
Africa. He was helped by academics
at the London School of Economics
and the School of Oriental and
African Studies. As with the African
National Congress (ANC) detainees
on Robben Island, a university of
the cells was established by the
detainees, and Mugabe, who had
been a teacher in Ghana in the early
1960s, was one of the lecturers.
By the time of his release he
was vehemently opposed to any
accommodation between the
frontline states of southern Africa –
committed to ending apartheid and
white minority rule – and Rhodesia.plunged Zimbabwe – spending so
much time on party and succession
battles , and seemingly none on
issues of deep impoverishment and
national non-productivity – became
apparent. Emmerson Mnangagwa ,
the new president, in stressing an
economic emphasis and outreach
to the world, seemed to admit that
the country was bankrupt and that
Mugabe had made it so.
Mugabe’s fall lifted the political
paralysis that had gripped
Zimbabwe, which he led as prime
minister from 1980 and president
from 1987. His authoritarian nature,
his ruthless manoeuvres, his stature
as the leader of liberation and his
scathing disdain of rivals could be a
dead hand on friend and foe alike.
However, Mugabe was a highly
complex man. He saw himself as last
in a line of African liberators and was
determined to carry that legacy with
him till his death, but he remained
an enigma to the non-African world.
Even in the 1980s, when he wasZambia’s president, Kenneth
Kaunda , considered Mugabe such a
risk to his ambitions for a peaceful
region that he had him arrested in- The man who had tasted white
imprisonment now found himself
detained by a black president. It is
perhaps no coincidence then that
after Zimbabwe’s independence was
achieved and the presidents of the
frontline states were honoured with
Harare streets named after them,
Kaunda’s street was a polluted road
beside the railway station.
K
aunda had
considered
Mugabe an
unreasonable and
disruptive force
and was glad to
be rid of him.
Arresting him had
been an embarrassment, and his
“escape” was probably engineered
by the Zambians themselves.
Mugabe resumed his nationalist
activities in Mozambique.
Once across the border, Mugabe
found that his prison credentials
were not enough to persuade the
Zimbabwean nationalist forces –
who had massed in Mozambique
and had begun a military onslaught
against Rhodesia – to accept him as
leader.
Mozambique’s president, Samora
Machel , arrested him, ostensibly
for his own safety in the face of
antipathy from the guerrilla leaders
already there, but Machel also shared
Kaunda’s suspicion of Mugabe.
However, by a series of adroit
manoeuvres Mugabe sidelined the
rebels’ military command with the
support of one key commander,
Solomon Mujuru , and in 1977 he was
elected president of Z anu.
Mugabe politicised Z anu to
an unprecedented degree. He
subordinated the military leaders
to party rule and infused the
sense of nationalist struggle.
The combination of the gun and
Mugabe’s political ascent sparked
the imagination of young people in
Rhodesia, and they fl ocked to fi ght
under his banner. Trained with
Chinese assistance in Mozambique
and Tanzania, they were sent back to
fi ght the white regime.
It is part of the mythology created
by Mugabe that his guerrillas won
independence and majority rule
for Zimbabwe, forcing the white
Rhodesian forces to capitulate.
There is little doubt that his forces
infl icted much more damage
on the white establishment and
infrastructure than the rival forces
of Joshua Nkomo ’s Zimbabwe
African People’s Union, operating
from Zambian bases. The two rival
armies were made up of diff ering
ethnicities from opposite ends of the
country. Though never on friendly
terms, the two men had enteredMugabe in 2002
at a world summit
on sustainable
development
AFP/GETTYObituaries
the darling of the west, diplomats
in Harare would characterise him
as secluded, deeply private, and
monastic in his self-discipline.
Though he was also often elegant
and eloquent, these characteristics
did not disguise his capacity for
ruthlessness.
Nor did his immense self-regard
as an intellectual. The collector of
several master’s degrees, he looked
down on his principal democratic
challenger, the less well educated
Morgan Tsvangirai , and on all those
not schooled in the texts of pan-
Africanism and African liberation.
For all his stature and his hugely
controversial legacy, Mugabe’s
start in nationalist politics was
courageous and principled, but not
auspicious. He was never a fi ghter
carrying a rifl e in the campaigns
against white rule. And nor, despite
his commitment to nationalisation
of the land, was he ever a peasant, a
farmer, or someone who had gripped
a hoe until calluses formed.Mugabe
sparked the
imagination of the
young and they
fl ocked to fi ght
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