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Robert
Mugabe: An appreciation on his 84th birthday
Sokwanele
February 21, 2008
http://www.sokwanele.com/articles/mugabe84_21022007
By any of the
normal indices by which one judges the success of a leader of a
modern nation state, he is a failure, and an abject failure at that.
Yet still, after 28 years of disastrous rule, he remains at the
helm and, incredibly, at the age of 84 he is putting himself forward
again as a candidate - ZANU PF's only official candidate - for a
further term as President of Zimbabwe. Such is the overwhelming
arrogance of the man, Robert Mugabe. And that, with such a record
of shame, he should have even the remotest prospect of prolonging
his tenure in office, is testament only to the experience and expertise
his regime has acquired in defying the democratic process.
At independence
in 1980, Zimbabwe seemed poised on the threshold of an era of great
promise. That independence was won at the cost of a bitter and protracted
civil war, but now the proud nation was bursting with new confidence.
Robert Mugabe was widely acclaimed as a hero - a revolutionary leader
who had committed to the cause of reconciliation and the path of
pragmatism. Western governments were falling over themselves in
the rush to provide offers of aid. In the general euphoria then
prevailing Julius Nyerere of Tanzania counselled Mugabe: "You
have inherited a jewel. Keep it that way."
28 years on
that precious jewel of Africa lies in ruins, giving an ironic twist
to the name of the country which is derived from the ancient ruins
of the stone fortress, dzimba dza mabwe, or "house of stone".
Officially Zimbabwe
now ranks fifth on the World Failed States Index, after such countries
as Somalia and North Korea. In truth by whatever index the country's
performance is measured, it must be counted as either a failed or
failing state.
The
Economy
Starting
with the economy, a few statistics give the measure of that failure.
To mention but a few of the key indices: the current (official)
year-on-year rate of inflation is in excess
of 66,000 per cent (nearly double that of the Weimar Republic
in 1923); between 1998 and 2006 the GDP shrank by 42 per cent, making
Zimbabwe's the world's fastest shrinking economy outside a war zone;
at a conservative best estimate four out of five Zimbabweans are
unemployed - and following the cascade of desperate Zimbabweans
leaving the country in search of work, it is now the case that 75
per cent of Zimbabweans with a job are employed outside the country;
and an estimated 80 per cent of the population is now living below
the poverty threshold . . .
One could go
on, and to put these mind-boggling figures into perspective, it
should be remembered that at independence in 1980 Zimbabwe had the
second largest economy in southern Africa and the third highest
GDP per capita. Furthermore between 1980 and 2001 the International
Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Africa Development Bank pumped
a combined 2.4 billion US dollars into the economy. Disastrous economic
decisions driven by a short-term political agenda, have brought
a once buoyant economy to the brink of collapse. And those trying
to rescue it have found themselves on the wrong side of "Mugabe
law" - like the 28,000 business executives and captains of
industry who in 2007 were arrested, detained or charged by the police,
their "crime" being to fail to comply with an edict slashing
prices to below the cost of their products. The result of course
was simply to empty the shelves of most supermarkets across the
country.
One could go
on - to mention the tourist industry which has been turned around
from one of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy with an average
annual growth rate of 18.5 per cent between 1989 and 1998 to an
industry showing a decline in revenues of 84 per cent over the years
1999 to 2004. Or one could mention the 80 per cent of wildlife on
commercial farms and conservancies which has been wiped out. The
evidence of economic vandalism is everywhere about us.
Agriculture
Agriculture
was always the backbone of Zimbabwe's economy and here, under Mugabe's
tenure of power, we have seen the country plunge from breadbasket
of the region to a basket case.
The UN Food
and Agriculture Year Book of 1975 ranked the then Rhodesia second
in the world in terms of yields of maize, wheat, soya beans and
groundnuts, and third for cotton. In the combined ranking for all
these crops the country ranked first in the world.
Zimbabwe was
the world's second largest exporter of flue-cured tobacco and, together
with exports of maize, soya beans, cotton, sugar, coffee, tea, fruit,
flowers and beef, agriculture was the country's greatest foreign
currency earner, providing more employment than any other industry.
Today up to
70 per cent of commercial agriculture has been destroyed and 90
per cent of the country's arable land lies fallow following Mugabe's
disastrous land-reform. Of the 4,300 large-scale commercial farmers
operating in Zimbabwe in 2000, only between 350 and 400 now remain
on the land. Other once-productive farms now lie derelict, the homesteads
occupied by Mugabe's political cronies - from the Chief Justice
to a disgraced bishop of the Church, with a thousand other opportunistic
individuals in between. Meanwhile an estimated 500,000 former farm
labourers and their families have been chased off the land, to become
homeless and destitute in a country that has not a semblance of
any social safety net.
Agricultural
experts estimate that the production of maize and soya beans has
fallen by more than 50 per cent, with tobacco and coffee production
falling by more than 75 per cent. Wheat production has declined
by almost 90 per cent, and the commercial beef herd is now a mere
20 per cent of what it once was.
From breadbasket
to basket case, a once-vibrant agricultural industry has been plundered
and looted in order to sustain Mugabe's vast system of political
patronage.
Food
Security
As
a direct result of the catastrophic decline of agriculture and the
economy the nation's food security has been shattered. The UN World
Food Programme has named Zimbabwe as one of the Global Hunger Hotspots.
It estimates that 4 million people are now threatened with hunger
and starvation, and has increased its own food distribution from
2.5 million in December to 3 million this month. Oxfam's assessment
is that between 30 and 40 per cent of all households are now in
need of food aid. Aid agencies, battling to respond to an escalating
crisis, are now faced with the stark reality that 45 per cent of
the population is already in various stages of malnutrition.
Diaspora
Faced
with such widespread and acute food shortages across the country,
the meltdown of the economy and massive unemployment, is it any
wonder that an estimated 4 million Zimbabweans, or one in four of
the population, have taken refuge outside the country ? They have
joined the ranks of the huge, and still growing, Diaspora.
In 2006 it was
estimated that 70 per cent of the 18 to 65 age group were living
outside the country. This represents the biggest proportional mass
movement of a population in peacetime in modern history. Moreover
this mass migration is itself having the most profound negative
impact upon almost every aspect of the nation's life. Already we
can see the near destruction of Zimbabwe's middle class, the disintegration
of family life and the undermining of many of the nation's core
religious and cultural values.
Health
Care
Zimbabwe
is undoubtedly within the world's top tier of countries devastated
by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Official statistics for 2001 put the number
of those infected with the virus at 24.6 per cent of the adult population.
The problem is compounded by the severe food shortages, and by the
understandable reluctance of donor countries to commit to a radical
programme of anti-retroviral treatment (as elsewhere on the continent)
because of the regime's record of tampering with aid programmes.
An estimated
3,500 Zimbabweans therefore are dying each week through a combination
of poverty, malnutrition and AIDS. The average life expectancy in
the country has now plunged to 37 years for men and 34 years for
women - these figures being even lower than for Sierra Leon, one
of the poorest countries on the face of the planet which is still
recovering from a period of bloody civil war.
Zimbabwe has
the highest number of orphans per capita in the world - something
in excess of 1.6 million, or one in four of all children. At this
rate it is approaching the historic levels set in Rwanda after the
genocide in 1994.
Faced with this
gargantuan challenge the country's health delivery system is in
a state of virtual collapse. Hospitals and clinics, which once offered
an unparalleled service to the nation, can no longer afford even
the most basic drugs. Starved of the resources required to even
begin to face the challenge, health officials have witnessed a steady
haemorrhaging of nurses and doctors to countries in which they can
at least sustain a tolerable standard of living. According to its
own figures the Ministry responsible has been able to fill fewer
than one in four posts for doctors. In 2006 the UN World Health
Organisation gave the number of doctors at one per 10,000 people.
In short, under
Mugabe's trusteeship healthcare in Zimbabwe now rests somewhere
between the high dependency unit and the mortuary.
Education
In
the early years after independence Zimbabwe recorded spectacular
advances in the provision of education at all levels. The country's
educational system was then considered among the best in Africa.
But here again all the earlier gains have been reversed.
According to
the United Nations children's agency, UNICEF, vastly fewer children
are now enrolling in school and of those who do many are forced
to drop out. In the early 1990s the free schooling provided in state
schools was replaced with a fee structure. As the economy has gone
into freefall schools have been forced to raise their fees, and
increasingly parents have been unable to keep up with the rising
costs. Even with the fees raised state schools have found themselves
grossly under-resourced and unable even to sustain the most basic
maintenance programmes. Once-smart school premises now resemble
derelict warehouses, and basic text-books have become unaffordable
luxuries for all but a few.
Meanwhile the
61 private schools that had hitherto provided a quality education
for the children of parents who could afford the fees, now find
themselves locked in endless battles with the Ministry responsible
which imposes totally unrealistic fee-capping measures. To comply
with the Ministry's directives would very soon send the private
schools into bankruptcy, turning further thousands of children out
onto the street.
Rule
of Law
So
much for the basic services which it is the fundamental responsibility
of any government to provide. Plainly and on any reckoning the Mugabe
regime has failed shamefully on every count. But what of the no
less important function of government in crime prevention and providing
security for Zimbabwe's citizens?
Here again we
see a spectacular failure on the part of those responsible, for
apprehending criminals and protecting the innocent. Yet this should
occasion no surprise at all. Indeed it was bound to be so, given
that the state itself under Robert Mugabe has deliberately subverted
the rule of law.
The independence
of the judiciary, crucial to safeguarding the human rights of all
citizens, has been deliberately sabotaged by executive intervention.
This was achieved partly by naked coercion, as in securing the resignation
of the former Chief Justice Anthony Gubbay, and partly by co-option,
using the vast powers of patronage Mugabe has at his disposal to
reward compliant judges, such as the Chief Justice appointed to
succeed Gubbay. At the fiat of the dictator, the constitutionally
enshrined principle of the separation of powers has been most seriously
compromised. It is this separation of Executive, Legislature and
Judiciary which is the ultimate guarantee of the constitutional
rights and freedoms of the subject. Little wonder then that it has
come under sustained attack from Mugabe's totalitarian regime.
A part of this
attack was in the form of the politicisation of the police, the
army and the civil service. When the separation of powers is respected
each of these arms of government is able to retain its professional
integrity, but under Mugabe's rule all have succumbed to the overweening
power of the Executive. The loss to the professional standing of
each has been profound, and with the most far-reaching consequences
for the freedoms of all.
Corruption
Along
with the subversion of the rule of law and politicisation of government
services has gone a huge increase in corruption which is now endemic
in the Zimbabwean body politic. In 2003 Transparency International,
an independent organisation that monitors global corruption, ranked
Zimbabwe the 77 th most corrupt of the 130 countries assessed. By
2005 it had slid to 130 th out of 163 countries, and today it is
deemed to be "very corrupt".
Judith Todd
recalls her father, Garfield Todd's, last comment on Robert Mugabe:
"What I cannot forgive is how many people he has corrupted."
The corruption
has ensured that Mugabe and his sycophantic entourage have been
able to protect themselves from the ravages of their own destructive
policies. They live in a kind of "bubble" in which they
are isolated and protected by their obscene wealth from the appalling
suffering of their fellow Zimbabweans. Once again Mugabe himself
has given the cue to the favoured few. He has recently had completed,
north of Harare, his own mansion which boasts no fewer than 25 en
suite bedrooms and was built at a cost in excess of 26 million US
dollars. (This in a country in which the average wage - for those
fortunate enough to be in employment - is the equivalent of eleven
dollars a month). And this is the third luxury residence Mugabe
has had built for himself, and the fifth he has owned since coming
to power.
In 2003 and
with the assistance of police, soldiers and youth militia, Mugabe's
wife, Grace, seized the magnificent Iron Mask farm in the Mazoe
valley. The owners, an elderly white couple, were given 48 hours
to vacate the property.
Human
Rights Abuses
The
gross human rights abuses systematically perpetrated by the Mugabe
regime are on a scale to warrant detailed consideration by an international
court of justice. Indeed it must surely be the aim of all those
who believe in freedom and justice to ensure that the perpetrators
are brought to justice and the appalling cult of impunity, first
introduced in colonial days and applied routinely under Robert Mugabe,
be ended once and for all.
Within a few
years of Mugabe's accession to power the appalling Gukurahundi massacres
were underway, resulting in the brutal murder by state agents of
more than 20,000 victims in Matabeleland and the Midlands. Indeed
so great was the scale of this atrocity that today it is reckoned
that one in twenty people in Matabeleland over the age of 30 are
the survivors of torture.
20 years later
in 2005, forces again under Mugabe's control carried out the brutal
military operation called Operation Murambatsvina (meaning literally
"remove the shit") in which, as a subsequent United Nation's
investigation established, the homes and livelihoods of over 700,000
Zimbabweans were destroyed. The operation was targeted at some of
the poorest of the poor.
In sheer scale
these were the most conspicuous of the human rights abuses perpetrated
by Mugabe and his agents, but the careful records maintained by
human rights monitors show that such abuses have continued throughout
the years of his rule. In recent years and as the dictator has felt
his power more seriously challenged, the frequency has increased,
until now torture is almost routine. The regime's attempts to conceal
these abuses have varied but increasingly of late the abuse of power
has been quite blatant and without apology.
"Until
they are stopped"
Such
has been the rule of Robert Mugabe. His team of ministers and other
functionaries, the ruling elite, have delivered a dazzling display
of sheer incompetence. But it is worse than that. The coterie of
sycophantic officials and political dinosaurs Mugabe has surrounded
himself with are indeed profoundly incompetent; but far worse, they
and the one whom they blindly serve are indifferent. They are totally
indifferent, as he is, to the huge damage and indescribable suffering
they are inflicting upon the nation. They simply do not care what
price the people of Zimbabwe have to pay in the execution of their
personal political agenda. The bottom line of that agenda, of course,
is that Mugabe will never voluntarily surrender power.
As the renowned
former ZANU freedom fighter Wilfred Mhanda said in an interview
in October 2005:
"The MDC
leadership totally underestimated Mugabe. They believed the struggle
for democracy would be hard, but they never understood that he was
prepared to destroy everything - them, the economy, the institutions,
the infrastructure, the whole country and everything in it - to
survive."
To borrow the
title of an address given by Judith Todd to the Cape Town Press
Club: "They will not stop until they are stopped."
In conclusion,
Robert Mugabe might dress with sartorial elegance but the smart
suits from Savile Row and the customized shoes from Italy should
fool no one. This man's soul is still clothed with the military
fatigues of a guerrilla leader, for he is still fighting - and until
he draws his last breath, will be fighting - a guerrilla war. In
the years before independence that war was being waged against an
oppressive colonial regime, but now that Robert Mugabe has himself
taken on the mantle of the colonial ruler, it is being conducted
against his own people. Only Zimbabwe's new oppressor has vastly
more power at his disposal, and is far more ruthless in his obsession
with holding onto power than ever his predecessor was.
It follows that
the international community must consider now and as a matter of
urgency what action to take in the event that Mugabe should attempt
to steal the presidential election scheduled for March 29. When
he and his party rigged the previous presidential ballot (and the
parliamentary elections of 2000 and 2005) the international response,
even from those countries which accepted it was a fraud, was somewhat
hesitant. If the 2008 elections are rigged, or if the Mugabe forces
stage a coup in defiance of the will of the people, we cannot afford
another such tepid response. Rather let those nations that have
a heart for Zimbabwe's much abused people and a mind to support
them in their courageous bid for freedom and democracy, brace themselves
for the necessary action. At the very least this will include the
following:
- An intensification
of the international pressure on Mugabe and those who are still
supporting him in resisting a return to the rule of law
- A recognition
of the courage of those who have dared to challenge the dictator,
even belatedly,from this point in time
- A substantial
increase in the support given to those working for democratic
change in Zimbabwe
- An increase
in the level of humanitarian aid made available to the starving
people of Zimbabwe through the United Nations (it being understood
that UN agencies will strenuously resist every attempt of the
regime to turn that aid to its political advantage)
- A very serious
engagement with the SADC governments to build a consensus in the
region to end the appalling suffering without further delay.
If Mugabe and
his cronies are aware of such measures in advance, so much the better.
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