It is difficult to imagine now, but Zimbabwe, immediately after independence in 1980, was the toast of the continent. The country, known as “the breadbasket of Africa,” was home to beautiful tree-lined streets in its capital Harare, tremendously productive farms and a population that seemed prime for growth and modernization.
Additionally, the country had a leader who seemed to understand the requirements of modern rule. That leader was Robert Mugabe, a former rebel leader who was glowingly referred to as “the thinking man’s guerrilla” and “pragmatic in practice and conciliatory in spirit.”
Much has been written about Comrade Bob, as he was once affectionately and now derisively known. The despotism of his rule has lasted more than three decades, stamping out much hope in a country once so brimming with promise.
Mugabe’s tyranny, leaving his people starving and brutally stifling dissent, is the reason he joins Omar al-Bashir of the Sudan, Mohamed Abdelaziz of the Western Sahara, Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea and Catherine Samba-Panza of the Central African Republic on “the Uninvited,” a list of African leaders excluded from the upcoming US-Africa Leaders Summit.
This ongoing AFK Insider mini-series is highlighting each of these leaders and the reasons for their exclusion.
On April 18, 1980, when Zimbabwe’s flag finally flew alone, independent after nearly a century of English rule, the world looked on Mugabe and his newly independent state with tremendous hope. Zimbabwe was one of only a half dozen countries that were net food-exporters across the globe.
The agriculturally productive climate of the sub-Saharan state, along with the pragmatism of its newly minted leader, led Africa-watchers to believe that the good times would only continue. With the hindsight of nearly three and a half decades of Mugabe rule, one struggles to think of situations where the world has been more wholeheartedly wrong.
Mugabe’s laundry list of wrongdoings began almost immediately. Between 1982 and 1986 his security forces massacred members of the Ndebele tribe in Matabeleland, a region of Western Zimbabwe, at genocidal rates.
Crack on Dissent
According to the BBC, the campaign started in an early effort to crack down on dissent. Things would become immeasurably worse, as Mugabe’s security forces set up a concentration camp and killed at least 20,000 people.
This massacre would set the stage for Mugabe’s treatment of dissent over the next three decades.
A variety of independent organizations from Freedom House to the Committee to Protect Journalists has reported violence to influence every element of society from journalists covering politics to dissuading dissent to influencing voting. Simply put, violence is the cost of disagreeing with or reporting on the happenings of Zimbabwe’s government.
It is not only the political sector where Zimbabweans suffer at the hands of Mugabe.
Transparency International, a non-governmental organization that measures corruption ranks Zimbabwe in the 20 most corrupt countries on Earth while the country is completely unable to feed its populace.
Economic mismanagement has led to statistics that can only be described as absurd. In the summer of 2008 the country’s inflation rate reached 231,000,000 percent. In an incompetent attempt to alleviate the problem (that would only be made worse) the central bank began printing notes as large as a one-hundred-trillion Zimbabwean dollars.
While the hyper-inflation has been stemmed, investor and consumer distrust of the system has led the American dollar to become the currency of choice throughout the country since a ban on the use of foreign currency was lifted in 2009.
The gross financial incompetence is part and parcel of the nepotism that has characterized Mugabe’s rule. Right after the turn of the millenia Mugabe cited gross inequity and nationalized the vast majority of white-owned commercial farms in an effort to provide impoverished Zimbabweans with farmland and food.
Instead, the land was given to cronies, a type of cronyism that continues in Zimbabwe.
In 34 years Mugabe has become the human form of the transition from darling of the optimist west to the picture of despotism.
Caricature of an African Leader
While Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, himself no stranger to fights against tyranny, once described Mugabe, according to the Guardian, as “”almost a caricature of all the things people think black African leaders do,” perhaps the greatest description of the transition of Mugabe is made by the man himself.
At independence, Mugabe gave a speech where he thanked those who suffered for independence and promised to unite and rule with the mandate he had received from Zimbabweans.
“While my Government welcomes the mandate it has been freely given and is determined to honor it to the letter, it also accepts that the fulfillment of the tasks imposed by the mandate are only possible with the confidence, goodwill and co-operation of all of you, reinforced by the forthcoming support and encouragement of all our friends, allies, and well wishers in the international community.”
However, more than three decades later, after he won the passage of a new constitution that would allow the 90 year old to stand for another term after his current one ends, Comrade Bob was asked if he would do just that. He responded cynically, asking Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times, “Why do you want to know my secrets?”
During his time in power the elderly Mugabe has gone from asking for goodwill and the support and encouragement of the international community to regarding informative and standard journalism as an attempt to know his secrets.
The true shame is that in that time he has managed to tie the fate of Zimbabwe to his own. This means in 34 years of autocratic rule the country has gone from the continent’s breadbasket and the envy of Africa to a cautionary tale.
Andrew Friedman is a human rights attorney and freelance consultant who works and writes on legal reform and constitutional law with an emphasis on Africa. He can be reached via email at afriedm2@gmail.com or via twitter @AndrewBFriedman.
