Zimbabwe: Ugly Manifestations of Absolute Power

editorial

When Lord Acton made his famous observation that "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely", he obviously had in mind some of Europe's notorious absolute monarchs.

But there can be no doubt he also had in mind some of the continent's iron-fisted despots, such as Germany's Adolf Hitler, Romania's Josip Broz Tito and Russia's Joseph Stalin. All these acceded to power through revolutions that toppled insufferable monarchs with the promise of greater freedom for the people but, invariably, they turned out to be far worse in every respect than the kings they had deposed. At the time that remark was made, Africa, then almost entirely under colonial rule perceived as fairly democratic - if the racially discriminatory aspect of their exclusion of "natives" from having a say in who governed them is conveniently ignored that, is - was relatively free of tyrants, as colonisers had brutally accounted for all its infamous absolute monarchs such as Shaka.

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