Zimbabwe went to the polls on Wednesday to elect a
president. The now perennial two horse race pitted President Robert Mugabe
against his Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
Mugabe has run the southern Africa nation for
thirty three years now and at 89 shows no interest in stepping down soon.
Since 1980 he has strengthened his hold on power by first
neutralizing his most credible opposition, fellow freedom fighter Joshua Nkomo
and his ZAPU party, became an executive president, broke the back of the white
commercial farming class by arbitrarily distributing land and is now well on
the way to retiring Tsvangirai, the former trade unionist and the latest
challenge to Mugabe’s hold on power.
"From afar we click our tongues at Mugabe and wonder why he just doesn’t let go. We lament that in trying to hold on to power he has whittled away any good will he had as a freedom fighter. And we sigh at how he has brought a once vibrant economy based on agriculture and mineral wealth literally to its knees...
Ranting about neo-colonial plots he has, simultaneously
forced his country to surrender part of its sovereignty by using the US dollar
as the national currency. Inflation had so got out of hand that the Zimbabwe
Dollar was not worth the paper it was printed on and in an effort to restart
the economy the country adopted the US dollar as it’s on.
And we wonder what happened to Uncle Bob.
He does not fit the stereotype of the cold war buffoon – he
has several degrees to his name and they must be genuine judging by his
eloquence in the languages he speaks and command of the English language. He is
not a fool.
To psychoanalyse Mugabe from this far away is futile,
impractical and unnecessary. It is more useful to understand power – how it is
captured and retained, in trying to work out but not justify, the motives of Uncle
Bob.
Mugabe came to power at the head of ZANU, a political group
that sponsored a rebellion against Ian Smith’s white minority rule government.
Zimbabwe like South Africa and Kenya was earmarked by the British as a colony,
a place they intended to settle forever not unlike Australia and New Zealand.
In such instances the war for independence and eventually against white
minority rule, was often bloody, with the colonial government aided
substantially by the settler community.
The settler community were the beneficiary of large tracts
of the most fertile land from which the local population were displaced
previously.
So the hero worship a figure like Mugabe enjoys from the
beginning is enough to paper over any shortcomings he may have, as anything is
better than the oppression of the colonial administration.
In addition the nature of the freedom struggle was not very
structured, with decision making centralized and often times done on the go.
There was no real institutional structure to defer to and this arbitrariness
carried on into government, overriding established procedures and institutions.
And last but not least was the question of how do you reward
the “comrades in arms” who had executed the struggle in the absence of well
laid procedure?
We shouldn’t forget too that once Mugabe assumed the
leadership of Zimbabwe, his rivals did not slink off into the sunset to lick
their wounds, but made tactical
withdrawals with every intention of dislodging him by any means, fair or foul.
"The dynamics of holding on to power in the context of a pliant population, eroding institutional capacity and a base of cronies fattened on the spoils of war meant Mugabe’s rule, or anyone else in his peculiar circumstances, could only go one way -- downhill.....
And so many years down the road when the leader gets an
attack of conscience and seems to be faltering in his resolve to hang on, his
associates will be quick to reassure him how he is still needed and if the
worst comes to the worst black mail him to continue, if only as a figurehead.
They fear that his capitulation could weaken them against
attack from external forces or worse, cause internal rivalries to erupt and
jeopardize the whole project. Keeping him on is there best bet for continued
feasting at the high table.
Mugabe still talks a good game, tearing into his rivals, and
pumping up neocolonial conspiracy theories to justify his place, but it is hard
to believe he is not alone, held hostage by these power bases that he built up to
bolster himself over the last three decades.
The poll results were not out by the time of going to press
but they will be announced by the end of business on Monday. It is hard to see
any other result than a continuation of Uncle Bob’s tenure at the top of
Zimbabwean affairs.
But then again stranger things have happened!
