The Last King of Zimbabwe
UNITED NATIONS — Comrade President Robert Mugabe celebrated his 83rd birthday recently. But amid the splendid and lavish celebrations for Zimbabwe’s ruler, the once prosperous southern African country has been run into ruin through a combination of corruption, socialist policies, and sheer incompetence. Despite this, and perhaps as an ironic present to himself, Mugabe has banned street demonstrations by the fledgling opposition party and has ensured that nobody will spoil his party—at least for now.
While the Presidential Birthday Boy celebrated, most of Zimbabwe’s thirteen million people faced the banes of inflation running at 1,600 percent, unemployment at 80 percent and negative economic growth! Strikes and protests are commonplace and political discontent seethes. Still Mugabe rules through fear, intimidation, and an uncanny charm.
Since assuming power in 1980, Mugabe has presided over the slow but sure decline of a resource rich country. Zimbabwe’s population lives in dire poverty and many have been forcibly removed from their homes. Last year United Nations agencies cited that a regime run operation to “clean up the slums” forcibly relocated at least 800,000 people—it just happens that most are from opposition groups.
The former British colony of Rhodesia, once a food exporter, today faces food shortages.
Forcible land seizures from white minority farmers, have pushed agricultural production into freefall. Now as if to add insult to injury, the UN’s Rome-based World Food Program may select a Zimbabwe national as its vice president!
Johannesburg’s Business Day newspaper reports, that “All seven African countries on the WFP’s 36-strong executive board are understood to support the bid of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s regime to win the post that could help to rehabilitate the isolated government. If successful, the brave attempt will put Zimbabwe in line to become the president of the body next year.”
Business Day adds, “the Zimbabwe government’s ill-considered agricultural and land redistribution policies have destroyed the country’s vibrant sector and spawned food insecurity, as well as widespread poverty.” Ironically it’s the same WFP which provides humanitarian aid for a million poor people in this formerly agriculturally abundant land.
Many African leaders quietly disapprove of Mugabe’s political dictatorship and especially fear that refugees will continue to pour into neighboring states. More than a million Zimbabweans voted with their feet and fled to neighboring South Africa. Officially The Zimbabwe Central Bank said 1.2 million Zimbabweans had gone to South Africa since 1990. However according to the BBC, “A South African government minister recently said there were two million Zimbabweans living in South Africa - Joyce Dube of the South African Women's Institute for Migration Affairs estimates the figure to be even higher, around three million.”
"The economic situation is deteriorating so fast … and as it does, Mugabe's own situation gets more and more desperate," said John Makumbe, a commentator and outspoken critic.
Having recently seen the movie the Last King of Scotland a gripping drama about the Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin who ran his country like a personal fiefdom in the 1970’s, I’m reminded that Mugabe though without the lavish uniforms and self-awarded military decorations evokes the same sordid mold. Like Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe views himself as the indispensable Father of the Nation though at the same time, feels threatened on all sides by enemies in the shadows. The primary difference is that while Amin came to power through a military coup, Mugabe was elected. And while Amin was the classic buffoon, Mugabe remains a calculating and maniacal Marxist who is too clever by half, at least in his hold on power.
Both Britain and the U.S. have long pressured for democratic change to little avail. The European Union has renewed economic sanctions and even China’s President Hu Jintao bypassed Harare, the Zimbabwean capital, on a recent swing through Africa.
Neighboring South Africa, the regional powerhouse, holds most of the cards in dealing with the situation, but refuses to play them.
The ruling ZANU-PF political party has postponed Presidential elections slated for next year. In the meantime, opposition Movement for Democratic Change party leader Morgan Tsvangirai said that recent street clashes with security forces showed there was a growing mood of defiance among opponents of the President. “Mugabe is now heavily dependent on a rogue militia and paramilitary forces in his war against the people,” he added.
Zimbabwe, a country named for the mysterious stone ruins of a lost African kingdom, has sadly lived up to its name. President Mugabe has taken a potentially prosperous land and turned it into the Zimbabwe ruins—and he’s become The Last King of Zimbabwe.
|
