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Zimbabwe: Mugabe And Africa's Habit of Unhappiness
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The Post (Buea)
OPINION
17 July 2008
Posted to the web 17 July 2008
Tazoacha Asonganyi
You may say that it is Mongo Beti who wrote a novel titled "Perpetua and the habit of unhappiness". We know. But do you know what "strongmen" and "banana republics" are?
They are "defining" characteristics of Africa! The story goes that usually monkeys fight in the jungle for bananas until the strong monkeys have them for themselves. Since in Africa there are life and death struggles for power until the "strongmen" grab it, our countries can be referred to as "banana republics"!
In a way, the description fits the manner in which Robert Gabriel Mugabe has emerged again as the "strongman" of Zimbabwe. To achieve this, he played the game of other "strongmen" in Africa: he labelled his opponent; accused him of treason; invented invisible conspiracies;
gave the impression that Mugabe was the sole repository of patriotism; forced the people to vote not in freedom but in compulsion; discredited politics by criminalising it; enthroned indignity and distress; claimed to be the representative of the people's will and sovereignty and a God-sent that can only be moved by God; went at the people with the bitterness which every defeated African politician secretes...
He instituted terror as a form of revolutionary government, claiming to be a "selfless servant" of the people he terrorised! He decreed that only "his" veterans could pass judgement, not the people he claims he liberated into freedom!
Following the end of the anti-colonial war, he successfully launched and led the people to win; he has failed in his 28 years of rule to translate the moral revulsion that led to the war to any credible political programme. The oppression and exclusion he has perpetrated is not different from the oppression and exclusion that Ian Smith presided over. The conditions that made possible the war of liberation, including inequality, abuse of human dignity and demands for political rights, have not been abolished.
Like in most of black Africa, colonialism was the guilty predecessor of independence in Zimbabwe. There is nothing wrong with setting goals and timetables and adopting programmes for reversing past injustices, but to use them to institute dictatorship and distress is a reflection of bad leadership.
When Mugabe indulges in invectives and shadow boxing with the West, which he rightly or wrongly considers to be the source of all his problems, he is fully aware that such a disposition after 28 years in power cannot create the democratic citizenry we expect to survive him.
After 28 years of "revolutionary" leadership, he is expected to leave behind citizens capable of independent judgments, who accept the coexistence of different opinions, different points of view, different passions and different interest groups in society.
He is expected to know that the citizens he will leave behind would remain in permanent struggle, in permanent self-reflection and self-criticism in order to open their society to challenge, innovation and change, and create the prosperity necessary for their survival in the new millennium.
Following his highly contested "victory", he flew enthusiastically to Egypt where he was received with much happiness at Sham-El-Sheikh by birds of the same feathers! Since then, many Africans have slipped from justified condemnation and opposition of neo-colonialism to uncritical support of the abuses perpetrated by Mugabe. Such slippages deny the responsibility of judgement in the formulation of credible politics in Africa.
Countries of the West will always criticise African leaders for their own reasons, but this is no justification for our failure or refusal to criticise the wrongdoings of our leaders for our own reasons! If our reasons for criticising wrongdoing coincide with those of the West, so be it; this will not convert our reasons to theirs.
The veterans who say they were at the forefront of the war to liberate the people were supposed to become vanguards in the education of the people. Living with the people and among them, they would have taught the people the virtues of patriotism and hard work, and helped to create a democratic environment in which the struggle for a better future would take place.
They would have helped to nurture a judicious politics to replace the impulsive politics of revulsion that led to the launching of the liberation war. Indeed, they would have become the representatives of the future by rejecting the practices that galvanised them to a liberation war in the past. Unfortunately, they have proclaimed themselves masters and superior custodians of the interests of Zimbabwe!
They have been the main conduit of the violence against fellow Zimbabweans. They would have known better that the colonial past, the neo-colonial present and the future that will emerge from their debris belong to all Zimbabweans; not to Mugabe, not to his veterans, not to any individual, whoever he/she may be!
Mugabe is an epitome, a metaphor for Africa's habit of unhappiness. He has been revered as a war hero for 28 years. He had the chance to show his other qualities all this time but he failed to do so. If we criticise him today, it is neither in disrespect nor to belittle his contribution to the liberation of Zimbabwe.
We criticise him to say that we are anxious to find a way forward; to say that when the young Zimbabwean looks at the road travelled in 28 years, it is difficult to discover their own duties, like Deng Xiaoping easily discovered his in 1978 following the 29-year rule of Mao Tse-Tung in China!
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Remember the wisdom of Frantz Fanon that "Each generation must out of relative obscurity discover its mission, fulfil it or betray it". Mugabe seems to be making it difficult for the young ones he will soon leave behind to discover their own mission.
There is no doubt that Professo Asongani is an academic titan. But this article does not attest to this neither in scope nor depth. So many sloopy and naive articles have been written on relation to Zimbabwe amd Mugabe, as Mugabe and Zimbabwe constitute the sexiest issues in African politics today, and just as many have been lacking in depth and worth. But when such sloopiness comes from a professor of great repute like Asongani is, it raises concern. I think a lot has been churned in relation to Mugabe and Zimbabwe to the extent that if a... [Read Full Text]
chizama6: you have given us no visible alternative. Instead you have dethroned reason, replacing it with emotions...just like a desperate househelp who has no breastmilk for her mistress's baby and must undergo the scourges of motherhood before her time comes. she will only find rest when Mama returns! So if you have nothing to say my friend, just wait for your time to come; it may never come if you keep replacing light with darkness.
To the Professor: INSIGHTFUL, THOUGHT-PROVOKING...GOOD FOR AN AUDIENCE WHERE I BELONG.
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