His Way? No Way! The Highway Mugabe

Africa’s “liberating lion” Robert Gabriel Mugabe stole the Zimbabwe election by brutalizing his opponents and their supporters. He now wants the world to recognize him as the legitimate winner of the election and leader of the country. No way. It is time for Mugabe to hit the highway.

The main problem in Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular, is its tribalism. It is what allows monstrous megalomaniacs to persist against all the interests of “the country.” It is probably the antipathies of tribalism that keep them there rather than the rationalistic interests of the unit called Zimbabwe, a creation of white boys at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885.

Mugabe received his education in Jesuit schools. Primarily a teacher, he joined the National Democratic Party and earned a 10-year jail term, during which time he earned bachelor’s degrees in law and education. When Rhodesian President Ian Smith allowed Mugabe to attend a conference in Lusaka, Zambia, he took off to Mozambique where he recruited volunteer freedom fighters. He and political rival Joshua Nkomo fought a successful guerrilla war with soldiers trained in China.

On December 21, 1979, the Lancaster House Agreement ended Britain’s rule over Rhodesia and paved the way for democratic elections the next year, which Mugabe won. He brought his Marxist communist ideals that formed his personal philosophy and social justice to bear on addressing the inequalities left by the white regime. Within a year, free junior school education was every Zimbabwean’s right. Those who qualified were guaranteed a place in secondary schools. A new housing law gave ownership to people who had rented their homes for 30 years or more. And the poor had access to free medical care.

In the late 1980s, Zimbabwe was the textbook example of a functioning African state. Yet today, after two decades of rule, Mugabe has become a caricature of the African despot ─ in the footsteps and tradition of Uganda’s brutal Idi Amin.

To his credit, Zimbabwe boasts a very high literacy rate for Africa. But, paradoxically, this is working against Mugabe. The young electorate ─ called the “Born Free” because they did not grow up under white rule, have learned the ideals of democracy and socialism, yet they have also witnessed their president’s descent into dictatorship and they want change. Shouldn’t we all?
Mugabe is determined to anoint his successor so that he can escape the almost certain criminal prosecution he will face if an opposition candidate wins. The ghosts of the 20,000 Ndebe people slaughtered in the Gukurahundi crackdown in the 1980s by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade, the starvation and brutality brought upon opposition supporters and their supporters in the media, the use of torture and the abuse of human rights all build a solid case against him. He knows he needs an exit strategy. And while he figures it out, the brutality and ban on opposition parties and politicians within his own party is destined to bring him down. Anytime a country is hungry and broke, its leader gets busted. That is the time to sit down with that leader and grant him immunity from prosecution and let him and his family keep a portion of their plundered loot that belongs to the people. That is the deal Boris Yeltsin cut with Vladimir Putin and the Russian people when the Russian economy was in tatters. Isn’t it time Zimbabwe cut the same deal with Mugabe and show him the highway?