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Time
of deafness
Chenjeria
Hove
Extracted
from Pambazuka News 238
March 21, 2007
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/40404
Mugabe – leadership without vision
or a brutal power-drenched dictator who has lost all sense of reality
and humanity?
Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, once
said the problem of Africa is a problem of leadership without vision.
That cannot be truer than recent events in Zimbabwe have proven.
Battered bodies, broken bones, bleeding
human flesh. That is all President Robert Mugabe has been able to
give to the people he is supposed to protect and lead, in the past
few weeks, even before. The president can only offer brutal violence
to a nation suffering from so many human catastrophes: economic
collapse, shortages of food and fuel, massive unemployment, unprintable
inflation figures, and finally, national hopelessness.
'Our people have bad eating habits.
They should eat rice and potatoes', he said in the midst of a critical
shortage of the staple maize in a country which produces neither.
For President Mugabe, the national
vision ends with him. 'L'etat, c'est moi', the leader seems to say.
The state is him, and he believes he owns every citizen, and so
can do whatever he wants with them. The outside world must not interfere
in the 'domestic affairs' of Zimbabwe. The president's vision ends
with his own power and self-preservation. Inflicted with deafness
and blindness, the president has lost the capacity to see anything
else around him. 'He has lost the plot,' as some have said. But
the reality is that he has lost any sense of reality. He is totally
out of touch with the real world around him.
Zimbabwe introduced a massive education
programme in the 1980s, enabling every child to go to school. And
the children did. Mugabe's ambition was to have a secondary school
in every cluster of villages. He almost succeeded. With such a high
thirst for education, the children and teachers flooded the countryside
and the cities. Almost every secondary school acted as two: one
group comes in the morning, and another in the afternoon, two schools
in one.
The educational yields were unbelievable.
Zimbabweans still believed in the power and efficacy of education.
It was the only way they knew that would take them and their children
out of poverty and ignorance. From school, the child would get a
job, thus help to save the whole family, including uncles and the
whole village. Parents would sell the last chicken, goat or cow
to send the child to school, their economic saviour. Teachers, too,
were trained in guerrilla-style courses. Those of us already qualified
to teach were assisting new teachers to train on the job. This went
on until the late 1980s when the World Bank intervened, claiming
that Mugabe was giving Zimbabweans too much education which would
flood the country with educated but jobless people.
Mugabe had not realised that the education
system was producing people who would begin to think for themselves
without being necessarily grateful to him. Who could analyse the
problems of society on their own, including the root causes of those
problems. Unfortunately, they discovered that the Mugabe government
had made no plans for a concrete skills programme to equip them
to enter the economy at a productive level. Students then started
to revolt, and Mugabe was furious. That was when he declared that
he had 'degrees in violence', challenging the students and calling
them hooligans. If Mugabe had realised the importance of his education
programme, he would also have realised that the youths were being
given skills to analyse everything and everyone, including him.
Now he hates the youth of the country, except those he hires to
kill and break the bones of his critics.
Mugabe would have preferred all Zimbabweans
to remain illiterate. That is his biggest regret. Even when he addresses
villagers, he uses impeccable English, better than Tony Blair and
George W. Bush - his arch-enemies.
Like most African leaders, Mugabe hates
the situation in which the citizens know their rights and are able
to demand them. His philosophy on democracy is what he calls 'guided
democracy', which means, as one of his vice-presidents, the late
Simon Muzenda, once said, 'If Zanu PF gives you a monkey as a candidate,
you have to vote for it'. This arrogance is typical of the Mugabe
government since he seriously believes that he is the most intelligent
leader in Zimbabwe and the rest of the continent. Mugabe's rule
is arrogance - 'arrogancocracy', if such a word exists. His ministers
have also taken the cue. And it flows down the ladder to his members
of parliament and village leaders who hardly ever visit or consult
their constituents.
The current violence in Zimbabwe has
also to be understood in the context of the 'liberator mentality'.
No liberation war has ever produced a democrat of substance.
'If you don't vote for me, there will
be war', Mugabe declared during the presidential campaign of 2002.
And being the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the army commanders
were soon to appear at a press conference in which they declared
that they will never salute a president who did not come out of
the liberation war. That was a silent military coup. So, even if
the opposition leader had won the presidency, he would never have
been allowed to go to state house.
The 'liberator' mentality also produces
the 'father of the nation' mentality. Mugabe intensely hated Joshua
Nkomo because Nkomo was establishing himself as 'the father of the
nation' long before anyone knew Mugabe. Hence the violence in the
southern provinces from 1983 to 1987. The purpose was to destroy
Nkomo's political base and make his supporters realise that Nkomo
was vulnerable and easy to destroy. The image had to be destroyed,
even if it meant destroying the man himself.
'I liberated you, so I can subdue you
and rule as I wish. You must be forever grateful to me', is the
thinking. When Mugabe attacks his opponents and critics, he uses
the liberation war as a licence to subdue all and sundry, by whatever
means.
Former liberation war leaders love
things and places named after them. In every town in Zimbabwe, there
is a Robert Mugabe street, usually cutting through the centre of
the city. In every government building and office, the framed picture
of Mugabe looks down at you as if you are under the omnipresent
eye of the President. It becomes a god-like symbol reminding every
citizen that the demi-god, Mugabe, is watching you, day and night.
In the quest for glory and grandeur,
the presidential palace is full of charlatans, praise-singers and
flatterers. First they used to call him 'the son of God', and then
one minister publicly said 'Mugabe is our Jesus Christ'. Next the
minister of education and culture has recently designed and installed
a 'throne' in parliament, for 'king Mugabe.' Then the minister of
local government would not be outdone. He has decided to build 'a
shrine' in Mugabe's home village. A shrine is a place of worship.
So the president has become a god who deserves a 'shrine.' Thus,
from VaMugabe ndibaba' (Mugabe is our father) to 'the son of God'
to 'Jesus Christ' to a 'shrine' a place of worship, God.
When a mortal human is elevated to
the status of a god, what can he not do? In biblical terms, God
said, 'I am the God of war. I punish children for the sins of their
fathers.' Hence President Mugabe, having elevated himself to that
level, does not hesitate to inflict pain and death on men, women,
children and the rest. All the problems of the country have nothing
to do with him. It is all because of the West, Tony Blair and George
W. Bush. Were he to admit a mistake, he would lose his infallibility.
So, when he was asked many years ago, if he had made any mistake
in the governance of the country, he answered, with a straight face:
'none at all'. The violence in Zimbabwe is Mugabe's 'rightful' demand
to rule like a god.
African leaders have developed the
capacity to transform themselves from elected leaders to royals,
then to demigods and finally gods, from a presidential medal to
a royal throne to a shrine, in their own lifetime.
Unfortunately, Africa is an extremely
religious continent. We love to worship, even if it means creating
our own gods in the name of a president. Religious hymns initially
meant to praise gods are soon adapted to praise The President. Church
uniforms normally depicting angels and Jesus Christ are soon flooded
with images of The President. Bank notes are also soon covered with
pictures of The President.
Africa is a continent of love and generosity,
so we always believe. But somehow it produces such these monstrosities
of political and financial power that it boggles the mind. We have
a reputation of creating laughter at every occasion, including death.
We have the capacity to produce an Idi Amin, a Bokassa, a Mobuto,
a Banda, a Mugabe, at the same time that we laugh and dance. Could
it be that we laugh and dance too much at the expense of serious
business? All one can think of is: if Africa did not laugh, it would
be crying all the time. 'We laugh in order not to cry', an African
once said.
Not many African leaders have ever
bothered to develop the language of democracy. President Mugabe
is known to be probably the most foul-mouthed president in the world.
There is no word he will not use against the opposition. At one
time they are 'dogs', at another they are 'stooges', 'terrorists',
'tea boys,' 'traitors', 'sell-outs', and many other vulgarities
only the mother tongue can pronounce. The ethics of language usage
do not exist for President Mugabe and his cronies. He has no capacity
to realise the implications of using a certain vocabulary in the
political arena. When he says 'we will crush the opposition', he
does not seem to realise that his youths will physically 'crush'
the heads and limbs of his opponents.
'Power is a desolating pestilence,'
an Indian scholar once observed. Power consumes human memory and
conscience. President Mugabe has been so totally consumed by power
that his memory does not seem to be about to rescue him. By training
youths to murder and maim, he has destroyed a whole generation which
has to be brought up again so they can learn to respect human life,
freedom, dignity and compassion. All this in the insane pursuit
of power for its own sake, power to loot and plunger the material
and spiritual resources of a country.
The powerful in Africa seem to be infected
with the diseases of deafness, blindness, and lack of vision of
a past, and a future without them. They will kill their own mothers,
sisters and brothers, if it makes them remain in power. When they
inherit the instruments and technology of torture and oppression,
they seem to be so grateful to their colonial masters whom they
take pleasure in blaming for other convenient things: 'As Africans
peacefully walked to the townships in the afternoon, just as they
had walked to work in the morning, they were beaten up, and dogs
were let loose on women and children', words of the late Zimbabwean
nationalist, Maurice Nyagumbo, as he remembers the colonial rulers'
treatment of Africans in Southern Rhodesia in the 1950s.
History, especially in Africa, seems
to repeat itself, in different colours of skin and flag.
* Chenjerai Hove is a Zimbabwean writer
living in exile in Norway.
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