Mugabe: The Old Man and the Sea
Toyin Falola
The Old Man and the Sea
- Obadiah Mailafia DPhil (Oxon)
Development Economist, Philosopher, Statesman
Abuja, Nigeria
Former Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe passed away in a Singapore hospital on Friday 6 September. A state funeral was held for him at a near-deserted stadium in Harare last Saturday. Dozens of leaders were in attendance, including Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo who led the Nigerian delegation. We understand that his remains will be interred in a month’s time when preparations would have been finalised for his official mausoleum at Heroes’ Acre in the heart of the capital.
He had been a fixture in his country’s politics for 37 years. Shy and almost effeminate, his outer demeanour belied the man of steel -- an African despot who spoke English with the polish of an Anglo-Saxon aristocrat. A grandfather who doted on children; he could be witheringly cold and severe. An austere teetotaller, he had vast business interests; with castles in Scotland and mansions in South Africa, Malaysia, Dubai and Hong Kong. His birthday banquets included endless courses of elephant, buffalo, antelope, impala and a lion. An avowed Catholic, he thought nothing of taking another man’s wife.
I once sat behind him at an international summit in Malabo. I remember the old man who sat glumly like a statue. But when it was his turn to speak his eloquence was electrifying. Mugabe is the most erudite statesman I have ever listened to, barring former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Alfred Kissinger.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born on 21 February 1924, at Kutama catholic mission in Mashona land. His grandfather reputedly served in the court of the great Ndebele monarch King Lobengula. His father Gabriel Mugabe Matibili walked out on the family for another woman in Bulawayo. His elder brother passed away, and soon thereafter, his younger brother also. Those tragedies cast a shadow over his childhood. He attended St. Xavier’s College Kutama, founded in 1914 by the Jesuits. Its motto is rather very telling: “Esse Quam Videri” (To be rather than to seem to be). Schoolmates remember him as academically outstanding, but reclusive. He was mentored by the local Irish priest, Father Jerome O’Hea, who describes him as a “fine heart and a fine mind”.
In 1949 he won a scholarship to Fort Hare University College in South Africa, at the time the Oxford and Harvard of the emerging black elites of East and Southern Africa. There he met future anti-Apartheid leaders such as Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, Joe Matthews and Duma Nokwe. Oliver Tambo and the legendary Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela would have graduated a decade earlier. He himself left the institution with an honours degree in History and English in 1952.
Returning home to Northern Rhodesia, he taught in local schools before moving up north to Lusaka in what was then Northern Rhodesia; he subsequently immigrated to Ghana, which, under Kwame Nkrumah, had become the hotbed of pan-African nationalism on the continent. While working at St. Mary’s Teacher Training College Takoradi, he met Sarah Francesca “Sally” Hayfron who became his wife. Sally was a bright and vivacious young woman who shared his radical politics. They had a son, Michael Nhamodzenyika, who died in 1974.
In 1960 he returned to Salisbury (now Harare) to cast his lot with his people. It earned him a long prison sentence, from 1964 to 1974. During those painful years he taught literacy, English and mathematics to inmates. He also read voraciously; earning degrees in law, economics and public administration as an external student of the University of London. In 1974 he crossed the border into Mozambique, where he joined ZANU. His charisma and eloquence made him a natural leader, especially following the untimely death of Bernard Chitepo in 1975. Driven to exhaustion by the bush war, in 1979 Ian Smith and the racist minority regime agreed to the Lancaster House talks under British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington.
Robert Mugabe won the elections as Prime Minister on 18 April, 1980. It was a time of great optimism and hope. During the first decade of independence Zimbabweans were relatively prosperous. Mugabe was the undoubted star on the Southern African firmament. But things soon went awry. Tensions with archrival Joshua Nkomo and his ZAPU led to the horrendous Gukurahundi military campaigns in Matabele land. More than 20,000 perished. It has been said that Mugabe was slow to raise the Land Question because he did not wish to jeopardise the prospects for majority rule in neighbouring South Africa. After the country achieved majority rule in 1994 he felt more emboldened to demand that Britain pay up for land reforms as agreed in the Lancaster House settlement. British intransigence gave him a free hand to do what had to be done.
Forcible land seizure of white farmlands without compensation angered Western powers, who soon imposed crushing sanctions. The British took back their honorary knighthood. The economy collapsed precipitately. Hyperinflation skyrocketed to a record-breaking 132,000,000% in 2008. The one-trillion dollar Zimbabwe bill remains a collector’s item to this day. It seems plausible, as has been alleged, that some foreign powers waged a secret currency war by flooding the country with fake Zimbabwe dollars so as to destroy the country. In response, Mugabe ordered the Reserve Bank to unilaterally adopt the U.S. greenback as a national currency. It was a smart move, because the Americans were pushed into a game-theoretic position where they could not produce their own fake legal tender currency. The problem was the dire shortage of small change. The adoption of the South African Rand as an ancillary currency was a welcome respite from those constraints. Unemployment rose to 80%, even as HIV/AIDs and poverty brought the country to its knees. Some 4 million – a quarter of the entire population – fled abroad.
South Africa brokered a peace which led to a national unity government with Mugabe as President and Morgan Tsavingirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) as Prime Minister during 2009-2013. But it was not to last. The old fox bade his time until he could outmanoeuvre his enemies and reconsolidate absolute power.
But sanctions were not alone to blame. The syndrome of personal rule settled on the political landscape of the country like a nuclear mushroom cloud. Mugabe boxed himself into a corner and was left with no friends except the likes of Muammar Gadaffi of Libya, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad of Iran and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. It is ironical that this ascetic statesman who dazzled the world with his brilliance ended up becoming one of the most reviled tyrants in Africa. According to one insider, the DNA of his despotism had been there all along: “When you look at his moves in the 1980s to establish a one-party state and his ideas of statecraft, the only constants are power – how to attain it, how to keep it and how to monopolise it. If it was a law that stood between him and power, he changed it. If it was an institution, he subverted it. If it was an election, he rigged it. If it was an opponent who stood between him and power, he had him killed.”
His mother, Mbuya Bona, warned his friends in the sixties: “You think my son cares about your politics….You don’t know how cruel my son is. Hamunyatsomuziva. You don’t know him at all.”
There is little doubt that Robert Mugabe felt overshadowed by the towering figure of Nelson Mandela, following the latter’s release from incarceration in 1990. The death of Sally in 1992 -- the only voice of restraint on his excesses -- rendered him bereft of wise counsel. He began an affair with his secretary, Grace Marufu, while Sally was battling terminal cancer. Some 41 years his junior, Grace, who was born in South Africa, had been married to an air force pilot, Stanley Goreraza. Sally passed away in January 1992 a while he and Grace were wedded in August 1996. They have three children together.
Popularly known as “Gucci Grace”, the former First Lady has the reputation of a gold-digger with the demonic ambition of Lady Macbeth. In 2014 the University of Zimbabwe awarded her a very dodgy PhD degree in Sociology barely two months after registering on the programme. Gucci Grace never concealed her single-minded ambition to capture the ultimate prize. She orchestrated the downfall of two former Vice-Presidents, Joice Mujuru and Emmerson Mnangagwa, to pave the way for her own ascension up the greasy pole. When rumours transpired that the old man was preparing to hand-over power to her, the army struck with speed. Mugabe was forced to resign on 9 November, 2017 or face the prospects of impeachment. Mnangagwa, who had fled to Johannesburg for dear life, was recalled to take over the mantle of leadership. A former Mugabe enforcer and personal assistant who became estranged from his principal; Mnangagwa belongs to the Old Guard, with its thuggery, parasitism and its culture of backwardness and grand larceny. The simple truth is that Zimbabwe needs a new breed of leadership if it is to join the ranks of prosperous democracies in the coming years.
After all the dust has settled, history will assure Robert Mugabe a place of undisputed honour as liberator and Founding-Father of a sovereign and independent Zimbabwe. His education and health policies were successful; as were the land reforms, imperfect as they were. Unlike Madiba, he refused to strike a Faustian bargain with the wicked and soulless Babylonians. If we listen to what new leaders such as Julius Malema of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party are saying, it is clear that, in Namibia and South Africa, the Land Question will not disappear any time soon.
From Aristotle to our day, successful political leadership is a factor of several elements: the opportunities and context available to the statesman; the nature of the political coalition that came into power; the policy space for manoeuvre; the configuration of global forces; and personal attributes such as wisdom, vision, courage, compassion and ability. It is an incontrovertible fact of life that politics is the one vocation that quickly exposes what a man is ultimately made of. When push comes to shove, the statesman can only give what he has. Ultimately, what Mugabe could give his countrymen and women was not very much. He was a leader with a high Intelligence Quotient (IQ) but was cursed with a low Emotional Quotient (EQ). He had neither the high enlightenment civic virtues of a Julius Nyerere nor the courtliness and ethical nobility of a born prince such as Nelson Mandela. His monomaniacal obsession with power turned him into a murderous tyrant who drove a country with humongous prospects into complete ruin. Zimbabwe’s contemporary travails must be laid squarely at his feet.
The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once wrote about what he termed “the crooked timber of humanity”. Mugabe had more than a fair dose of that original sin. Whatever he might have achieved as a statesman will always be overshadowed by his pernicious hubris and the self-delusional omniscience and infallibility that broke the confidence of such a gifted people.
Toyin Falola
Department of History
The University of Texas at Austin
104 Inner Campus Drive
Austin, TX 78712-0220, USA
Chimalum Nwankwo
--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/1A3EAAB2-41EF-4E46-9727-893FFCC2E77C%40austin.utexas.edu.
Gloria Emeagwali
--
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
Ibrahim Abdullah
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAO%2BBDq98Cy%3DxGjrsPaPpPz5aQVJvMsUAq5UpA7siSqSPknC09w%40mail.gmail.com.
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/1A3EAAB2-41EF-4E46-9727-893FFCC2E77C%40austin.utexas.edu.
Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
This does not wipe away Mugabe’s credentials as a freedom fighter.
Mandela ended up with four million dollars, minus royalties, apparently accrued after 1990. We still love him - although South Africans remain landless.
To appreciate fully longlived personalities you have to assess them in phases and judge them accordingly. Mandela in the 1940s was an activist and a positively radical “young Turk”. Between 1950 and 1960s, he was a mature revolutionary that would prefer death to opportunistic compromise. 1980s and later he became the grand compromiser. Some - including Winnie- went so far as to call him a sellout. We have to appreciate his positive contributions, all the same, especially in the earlier years as in the case of Mugabe.
Gadaffi is another example. Gadaffi lost some of his direct family to the Italians who killed about half of the Libyan population by the 1940s. He was aware of the 20 year heroic struggle of the great Libyan anti- colonial fighter, Umar al- Mukhtar who was executed in the public square by the Italians in one of their concentration camps in Libya that you may not have heard about. In some ways Umar was reminiscent of the great Somali anti-colonial fighter Moh. Bin Abdullah Hassan, a thorn in the flesh for the British for almost thirty years.
Gadaffi was a fervent anti colonialist when he seized power in the 1950s from the pro-Western king, and remained so for most of his long years in power. His undoing was the regional divide in Libya between Tripolitania in the west, and the Eastern region, Cyrenaica where support for the Sanusi dynasty remained and where there was the perception and reality of relative marginalization. Gadaffi also became relatively intolerant in the end.
Libya had great social services and enviable medical care in the Gadaffi era. He did not inherit a settler colony and all its challenges, but provided great financial support to freedom fighters in Africa fighting settler colonialism. He made poor decisions in some instances and excellent unforgettable ones in others. He supported the anti- apartheid forces in Southern Africa and called for reparations of $777 trillion dollars for colonialism - not too long before his eventual assassination.
As in the case of Mugabe, there was evidence of corruption in the end but there is much to admire and take into consideration even though there are some rightful causes for alarm.
Freedom fighters such as Mugabe had two major problems and concerns.
What if they were overthrown, killed or pushed into exile?
What if the colonial forces used some of their internal opponents to undermine them and restore (neo)colonial rule? In both instances, they often overreacted.
May the souls of Mandela, Mugabe and Gadaffi rest peacefully as we thank them for their diverse contributions during a tumultuous era of trials and tribulations.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2019 6:23:52 PM
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mugabe: The Old Man and the Sea
Please be cautious: **External Email**
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM6PR01MB37377A72F4BEAF44EB319A99DE8C0%40DM6PR01MB3737.prod.exchangelabs.com.
Chambi Chachage
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM6PR01MB37377A72F4BEAF44EB319A99DE8C0%40DM6PR01MB3737.prod.exchangelabs.com.
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (This does not wipe away Mugabe’s credentials as a freedom fighter.
Mandela ended up with four million dollars, minus royalties, apparently accrued after 1990. We still love him - although South Africans remain landless.
To appreciate fully longlived personalities you have to assess them in phases and judge them accordingly. Mandela in the 1940s was an activist and a positively radical “young Turk”. Between 1950 and 1960s, he was a mature revolutionary that would prefer death to opportunistic compromise. 1980s and later he became the grand compromiser. Some - including Winnie- went so far as to call him a sellout. We have to appreciate his positive contributions, all the same, especially in the earlier years as in the case of Mugabe.
Gadaffi is another example. Gadaffi lost some of his direct family to the Italians who killed about half of the Libyan population by the 1940s. He was aware of the 20 year heroic struggle of the great Libyan anti- colonial fighter, Umar al- Mukhtar who was executed in the public square by the Italians in one of their concentration camps in Libya that you may not have heard about. In some ways Umar was reminiscent of the great Somali anti-colonial fighter Moh. Bin Abdullah Hassan, a thorn in the flesh for the British for almost thirty years.
Gadaffi was a fervent anti colonialist when he seized power in the 1950s from the pro-Western king, and remained so for most of his long years in power. His undoing was the regional divide in Libya between Tripolitania in the west, and the Eastern region, Cyrenaica where support for the Sanusi dynasty remained and where there was the perception and reality of relative marginalization. Gadaffi also became relatively intolerant in the end.
Libya had great social services and enviable medical care in the Gadaffi era. He did not inherit a settler colony and all its challenges, but provided great financial support to freedom fighters in Africa fighting settler colonialism. He made poor decisions in some instances and excellent unforgettable ones in others. He supported the anti- apartheid forces in Southern Africa and called for reparations of $777 trillion dollars for colonialism - not too long before his eventual assassination.
As in the case of Mugabe, there was evidence of corruption in the end but there is much to admire and take into consideration even though there are some rightful causes for alarm.
Freedom fighters such as Mugabe had two major problems and concerns.
What if they were overthrown, killed or pushed into exile?
What if the colonial forces used some of their internal opponents to undermine them and restore (neo)colonial rule? In both instances, they often overreacted.
May the souls of Mandela, Mugabe and Gadaffi rest peacefully as we thank them for their diverse contributions during a tumultuous era of trials and tribulations.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
Sent: Sunday, September 15, 2019 6:23:52 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Mugabe: The Old Man and the Sea
Please be cautious: **External Email**
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Sent: Monday, September 16, 2019 11:21 AM
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM6PR01MB37377A72F4BEAF44EB319A99DE8C0%40DM6PR01MB3737.prod.exchangelabs.com.
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/BN8PR12MB305762FF1A48F843FF1B0A28DA8C0%40BN8PR12MB3057.namprd12.prod.outlook.com.
Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
This is an absurd analogy. Time for me to quit this discussion and go to the
Gym.
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
Sent: Monday, September 16, 2019 10:26:03 PM
Chimalum Nwankwo
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM6PR01MB373732A5E7B19FDEED0F303ADE8E0%40DM6PR01MB3737.prod.exchangelabs.com.
Chambi Chachage
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/DM6PR01MB37372CC8625DF94D37D682C3DE8E0%40DM6PR01MB3737.prod.exchangelabs.com.
Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
What are their positives and do these match up to the challenges faced by Mandela, Mugabe and Gadaffi?
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
OLAYINKA AGBETUYI
This message is eligible for Automatic Cleanup! (History Department, Central Connecticut State University
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
william lee
william lee
william lee
Robert Mugabe was a revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe. His decisions seem to be surrounded by controversy and opposing perspective in regard to his legacy after his death. For some he represented a great man who brought independence and a resolution to the issue of white-minority rule. For others its seems that he became the embodiment of an African dictator, who used the country upon which he ruled in order to keep his position in power. Based on the reading, I would conclude that although Robert Mugabe might have done some good things early in his career; the harm he caused his country would exponentially overshadow any good he did. Yet I believe that it is also important to not let the negativity surrounding his last years in power to undervalue his earlier contributions to his country even thought his legacy will ultimately encompass the fostering of corruption and the abuse of the Zimbabwean people.
Harrow, Kenneth
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
Sent: Monday, September 23, 2019 4:11 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Mugabe: The Old Man and the Sea
To post to this group, send an email to USAAfric...@googlegroups.com
To subscribe to this group, send an email to USAAfricaDial...@googlegroups.com
Current archives at http://groups.google.com/group/USAAfricaDialogue
Early archives at http://www.utexas.edu/conferences/africa/ads/index.html
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "USA Africa Dialogue Series" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com.
