president Robert Gabriel Mugabe and his beleaguered country are in the news once again for another wrong reason. Mugabe, always a crafty politician even in his old age is now scheming to make his wife Grace succeed him as the President of Zimbabwe. In order to achieve this aim, he has just orchestrated the removal of his long-time associate, Emmerson Mnangagwa as the Vice- President of the country. Mnangagwa is accused of ‘consistently and persistently exhibiting traits of disloyalty, disrespect, deceitful ness and unreliability’. Mugabe and his cronies in the ZANU– PF have not told the world when the Vice-President started exhibiting all these unwholesome traits but the world knows that for many years the man has suffered pungent verbal abuses from Grace, Mugabe’s wife who has never hidden her feeling that getting rid of Mnangagwa and his supporters would guarantee her the post of the President of the country after the exit of the aging Mugabe.
The action of Mugabe and his cronies is nothing but a primitive mode of political nepotism clothed in absurdity and which should not be tolerated in Africa in this 21st century.
Before analysing the implication of this Dark Age political shenanigan in Zimbabwe, I will like to trace the journey of how Robert Mugabe brought himself and his country to possibly irredeemable political infamy.
When Zimbabwe, formerly known as Southern Rhodesia became an independent country in 1980, Robert Mugabe who became the country’s first Prime Minister was the toast of millions of freedom loving people all over the world because of his dogged role in the liberation of his country. The independence struggle of Zimbabwe was grim as the British government under the imperious Margaret Thatcher was unwilling to grant independence to this country. After the independence of Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia) and Malawi (formerly Nyasaland), Britain sat on the independence of Southern Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) because Britain wanted to make it as a buffer between independent African countries above river Limpopo and the racist apartheid South Africa which was under a minority white government.
Britain was however forced to change course because of the liberation struggle which was strongly supported by Nigeria under the then General Olusegun Obasanjo’s military government which nationalized Shell BP owned by Britain. This action of Nigerian government jolted Britain. Nigeria also helped to broker peace between Mugabe and his rival Joshua Nkomo to form a united front called ZANU–PF. With this united front, the two of them were able to confront successfully the racist government in Southern Rhodesia under the wily Ian Smith and independence was achieved for Southern Rhodesia and named Zimbabwe. At independence in 1980, Mugabe became the Prime Minister and the charismatic Nkomo became minister of Internal Affairs and was rightly regarded as ‘the father of the nation’ because he started the liberation struggle before Mugabe who shot into limelight by taking over the leadership of ZANU from Ndibanige Sithole in what can be regarded as a palace coup when they were in prison.
Few years after independence in 1980, Mugabe and Nkomo disagreed violently as the two of them suspected one another because each of them was seen as representing the two major tribes in Zimbabwe that had been having age-long debilitating competition among themselves. Mugabe is a Mashona , the majority tribe while Nkomo was a Matebele, the minority tribe. Mugabe in order to get rid of Nkomo in the post-independence government unleashed a reign of terror on Matebeleland. Mugabe used fiendish soldiers trained in North Korea to decimate Matebeleland and many people were killed and maimed and Nkomo himself had a narrow escape to England. By this act, Mugabe became the undisputed leader of the newly independent Zimbabwe and through his actions Nkomo’s people in Matebeleland became more or less serfs to the Mashona people of Mugabe. Nkomo died in 1999, broken and disgraced despite his tremendous contributions to the independence of Zimbabwe. The Mashona people now today call the shots in political and economic activities in Zimbabwe.
Initially Mugabe used the contentious land issue in Zimbabwe to consolidate his hold on power. He blamed Britain for the land problem in his country because Britain reneged on its promise to make money available to pay compensations to the white farmers who were to give up their choice land for the new black African farmers. This led to his famous quip that ‘ the only white man you can trust is a dead white man’. However, the lands appropriated from the white farmers were distributed among Mugabe’s cronies instead of being given to the deprived landless black farmers who needed the land to eke out their sustenance. The new land-owners lived in the capital at Harare leaving the land untended. The net result of this was that the once vibrant agricultural sector in Zimbabwe based on tobacco production collapsed and it has never been revived. From that time, Mugabe lurched from one political crisis to another as the economy collapsed and currency of Zimbabwe became worthless. Inflation went over the roof. He blamed everybody except himself for the economic woes of his country brought about by his poor economic policies.
After 37 years in the saddle as the iron fisted ruler of Zimbabwe, the 93-year old Mugabe has lost steam and turned his country to a pariah state. As he knows that he cannot live for ever, he is now making desperate efforts to install his second wife, Grace who he met when she was a low grade secretary in his office as the President. The obvious scheming of Robert Mugabe to make his wife who is 52 years old and who is more than 40 years his junior as his successor is a sad reflection of unsavoury political development in Africa. We saw this selfish action in Togo where the late Eyadema, after ruling the hapless country for 38 years, was succeeded by his son Faure. The same odious situation assailed the sensibilities of Africans in Gabon where the late diminutive Omar Bongo after ruling his otherwise rich country for almost 40 years was succeeded by his son. I am sure that Museveni, the aging dictator in Uganda and Paul Kagame his counterpart in Rwanda are waiting for their sons to succeed them. Some African leaders are trying to create political dynasty in Africa not through democratic processes but through dictatorial fiat.
What Africa needs at the moment is not primitive political dynasty as exemplified in Togo and Gabon and which is being copied in Zimbabwe. Africa now needs business dynasty where entrepreneurship is supported by family lineage. I know of many family enterprises in Europe which had been sustained over the years by family members. Here I will give an example of Burton and Colier tailoring enterprises that had been run by family members since the 18th century in England. Unfortunately this trend is very rare or non-existent in Africa. Africa should now focus on how to develop family enterprises in the continent not on spurious family succession in governance which is nothing but political jobbery and nepotism. This is the nauseating political absurdity that Mugabe is trying to foist on the hapless people of Zimbabwe. If Mugabe succeeds in making his wife to succeed him, he will be replicating what Juan Peron the Argentine dictator did in the seventies when he made his wife Isabel Martinez de Peron to be his Vice President between 1973 and 1974. The wife subsequently succeeded him as the President of Argentina and ruled between 1974and 1976. This arrangement triggered off many years of political and economic instability in Argentina which only abated when democracy was restored in the country in the eighties.
No country in Africa should copy this political nepotism with its attendant instability.
- Prof. Lucas writes from New Bodija, Ibadan.
