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Mugabe's bloody descent
Martin Meredith, Los Angeles Times
April 08, 2008

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-meredith8apr08,0,1605208.story

The careers of two of Africa's most prominent politicians -- Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela -- have striking similarities. Both were born in an era when white power prevailed throughout Africa, Mandela in 1918, Mugabe in 1924. Both were products of the Christian mission school system. Both attended the same university, Fort Hare in South Africa. Both emerged as members of the small African professional elite, Mandela a lawyer, Mugabe a teacher. Both were drawn into the struggle against white minority rule, Mandela in South Africa, Mugabe in neighbouring Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Both advocated violence to bring down white-run regimes. Both endured long terms of imprisonment, Mandela, 27 years, Mugabe, 11. Both suffered the anguish of losing a son while in prison, and both were refused permission to attend the funeral.

But whereas Mandela used his prison years to open a dialogue with South Africa's white rulers in order to defeat apartheid, Mugabe emerged from prison bent on revolution, determined to overthrow white society by force. Military victory, he said, would be the "ultimate joy."

Even after seven years of a civil war in which at least 30,000 people died, Mugabe, having gained power through elections, expressed disappointment that he had been denied the kind of power that military victory would have given him. For Mugabe, power was not the means to an end but the end itself.

This year, Mandela celebrates his 90th birthday, acclaimed around the world as one of the great leaders of his time, while Mugabe battles on grimly after 28 years of power, like a prizefighter whose eyes are blinded by his own blood -- and the blood of many others. The early years of Mugabe's rule seemed full of promise. Instead of the angry Marxist ogre the white minority had feared, Mugabe appeared as a model of moderation after winning the 1980 election, pledging to work for reconciliation and racial harmony. Even the recalcitrant white leader, Ian Smith, who previously had denounced him as "the apostle of Satan," found him "sober and responsible."

Western governments lined up with offers of aid. In its first year of independence, Zimbabwe was awarded $2 billion in aid, enabling Mugabe to embark on ambitious health and education programs. The white population also benefited from growing economic prosperity. Given large increases in commodity prices, white farmers -- the backbone of the economy -- became ardent supporters of Mugabe's government and his ruling ZANU-PF party.

But Mugabe's black political opponents fared less well. Within weeks of gaining power, Mugabe set out to crush political opposition in Matabeleland province and establish a one-party state. The military campaign he unleashed there in the 1980s culminated in mass murder -- as many as 20,000 civilians are estimated to have died -- but it gave Mugabe the total control he had always sought.

In the capital of Harare, meanwhile, Mugabe's inner circle scrambled for farms, businesses and government contracts. Mugabe joined the fray, but his real obsession was not personal wealth but power. Year by year, he acquired ever greater control, ruling the country through a vast system of patronage and ignoring the spreading blight of corruption. "I am rich because I belong to ZANU-PF," boasted one of Mugabe's proteges, a millionaire businessman. "If you want to be rich, you must join ZANU-PF."

Under Mugabe's one-party system, his tentacles reached into every corner of the land. One by one, parliament, the state media, the police, the civil service and the courts were subordinated to his will. In dealing with dissidents, his secret police were licensed to harass, intimidate and even murder at will.

By the mid-1990s, Mugabe had become an irascible dictator, brooking no opposition, contemptuous of the law and human rights, surrounded by sycophantic ministers and indifferent to the incompetence and corruption around him. Whatever good intentions he had started out with had long since faded.

By 2000, Zimbabweans were generally worse off than they had been at independence: Average wages were lower; unemployment had tripled; public services were crumbling and life expectancy was falling.

As opposition to his rule mounted, Mugabe struck back with increasing ruthlessness. His first target was white farmers who, worried about title to their land, had shown signs of supporting a new opposition coalition, the Movement for Democratic Change. Hoping to bolster his popularity, Mugabe sent gangs of ZANU-PF activists to seize white-owned farms and distribute them to his supporters, but it led only to the collapse of the agricultural industry.

His ultimate objective, however, was to crush all opposition and remain in power. Since 2000, he has used all the government's resources to attack his opponents, sanctioning murder, torture and lawlessness of every kind; rigging elections; violating the courts and suppressing the independent press. In a speech in 2003, he warned that he would use even worse violence if necessary, threatening to act like a "black Hitler" against the opposition: "If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold."

Zimbabwe has been reduced to a bankrupt and impoverished state, threatened by economic collapse and catastrophic food shortages.

But still Mugabe fights on. "No matter what force you have, this is my territory, and that which is mine I cling [to] unto death," he said during a previous election campaign. And he is far from finished. Though losing control of parliament in last month's election, he can still rely on party militias, youth groups, war veterans, police and army generals to help him win the next round of the presidential election. Violence has been Mugabe's stock in trade for more than 30 years. It is not a pleasant prospect for Zimbabweans yearning for something better.

*Martin Meredith, the author of "The Sate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence," has written biographies of Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela.

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