Author: TSA Press

* “I like sex. Sex is fun and I can get paid for it. You can make a job out of this? That’s fantastic.” Sears said. “Why would I not do this?” Of course we’ve heard about the lawyer who’s also working as a prostitute. We’ll have more on this incredibly interesting story later today. [KCCI Des Moines]

* Will 2019 be a year without a blockbuster Biglaw merger? With the A&O/O’Melveny combo off the table, it could be. “There were so many mergers the last couple of years that we are seeing a slowdown.” [American Lawyer]

* Lawyers for Paul Manafort are trying to get a mortgage fraud case against him in New York dismissed, citing double jeopardy law. He doesn’t want to have to do more jail time, even if Trump pardons him. [Reuters]

* Lawyer staffing company Axiom will no longer be pursuing an IPO thanks to an infusion of cash from private equity firm Permira Funds. It would have been one of the first publicly traded legal businesses in the country. [Big Law Business]

* Remember the Jussie Smollett controversy where the actor claimed he was involved in a racist and homophobic attack? His lawyers say he shouldn’t have to pay Chicago six figures for the investigation into the hoax because how was he supposed to know so much time would be spent on it. [ABC 7 Chicago]

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

But the hope that accompanied independence in 1980 dissolved into violence, corruption and economic disaster.

President Mugabe became an outspoken critic of the West, most notably the United Kingdom, the former colonial power, which he denounced as an “enemy country”.

Despite his brutal treatment of political opponents, and his economic mismanagement of a once prosperous country, he continued to attract the support of other African leaders who saw him as a hero of the fight against colonial rule.

Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born in what was then Rhodesia on 21 February 1924, the son of a carpenter and one of the majority Shona-speaking people in a country then run by the white minority. Educated at Roman Catholic mission schools, he qualified as a teacher.

Winning a scholarship to Fort Hare University in South Africa, he took the first of his seven academic degrees before teaching in Ghana, where he was greatly influenced by the pan-Africanist ideas of Ghana’s post-independence leader Kwame Nkrumah. His first wife Sally was Ghanaian.

In 1960, Mugabe returned to Rhodesia. At first he worked for the African nationalist cause with Joshua Nkomo, before breaking away to become a founder member of the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu).

In 1964, after making a speech in which he called Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith and his government “cowboys”, Mugabe was arrested and detained without trial for a decade.

Mugabe (l) with Nkomo (r) in 1960. The relationship between the two would sour after independence

His baby son died while he was still in prison and he was refused permission to attend the funeral.

In 1973, while still in detention, he was chosen as president of Zanu. After his release, he went to Mozambique and directed guerrilla raids into Rhodesia. His Zanu organisation formed a loose alliance with Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu).

During the tortuous negotiations on independence for Rhodesia, he was seen as the most militant of the black leaders, and the most uncompromising in his demands.

On a 1976 visit to London, he declared that the only solution to the Rhodesian problem would come out of the barrel of a gun.

Conciliatory

But his negotiating skills earned him the respect of many of his former critics. The press hailed him as “the thinking man’s guerrilla”.

The Lancaster House agreement of 1979 set up a constitution for the new Republic of Zimbabwe, as Rhodesia was to be called, and set February 1980 for the first elections which would be open to the black majority.

Fighting the election on a separate platform from Nkomo, Mugabe scored an overwhelming and, to most outside observers, unexpected victory. Zanu secured a comfortable majority, although the polls were marred by accusations of vote-rigging and intimidation from both sides

A self-confessed Marxist, Mugabe’s victory initially had many white people packing their bags ready to leave Rhodesia, while his supporters danced in the streets.

However, the moderate, conciliatory tone of his early statements reassured many of his opponents. He promised a broad-based government, with no victimisation and no nationalisation of private property. His theme, he told them, would be reconciliation.

He initially promised a programme of reconciliation

Later that year he outlined his economic policy, which mixed private enterprise with public investment.

He launched a programme to massively expand access to healthcare and education for black Zimbabweans, who had been marginalised under white-minority rule.

With the prime minister frequently advocating one-party rule, the rift between Mugabe and Nkomo widened.

After the discovery of a huge cache of arms at Zapu-owned properties, Nkomo, recently demoted in a cabinet reshuffle, was dismissed from government.

While paying lip service to democracy, Mugabe gradually stifled political opposition. The mid-1980s saw the massacre of thousands of ethnic Ndebeles seen as Nkomo’s supporters in his home region of Matabeleland.

Confiscation

Mugabe was implicated in the killings, committed by the Zimbabwean army’s North Korean-trained 5th Brigade, but never brought to trial.

Under intense pressure, Nkomo agreed for his Zapu to be merged with – or taken over by – Zanu to become the virtually unchallenged Zanu-PF.

After abolishing the office of prime minister, Mugabe became president in 1987 and was elected for a third term in 1996.

The same year, he married Grace Marufu, after his first wife had died from cancer. Mugabe already had two children with Grace, 40 years his junior. A third was born when the president was 73.

Farms were occupied by Zanu-PF supporters

He did have some success in building a non-racial society, but in 1992 introduced the Land Acquisition Act, permitting the confiscation of land without appeal.

The plan was to redistribute land at the expense of more than 4,500 white farmers, who still owned the bulk of the country’s best land.

In early 2000, with his presidency under serious threat from the newly formed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by former trade union leader Morgan Tsvangirai, Mugabe lashed out against the farmers, seen as MDC backers.

His supporters, the so-called “war veterans”, occupied white-owned farms and a number of farmers and their black workers were killed.

Foreign aid

The action served to undermine the already battered economy as Zimbabwe’s once valuable agricultural industry fell into ruin. Mugabe’s critics accused him of distributing farms to his cronies, rather than the intended rural poor.

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Robert Mugabe – key dates

1924: Born. Later trains as a teacher

1964: Imprisoned by Rhodesian government

1980: Wins post-independence elections

1996: Marries Grace Marufu

2000: Loses referendum, pro-Mugabe militias invade white-owned farms and attack opposition supporters

2008: Comes second in first round of elections to Tsvangirai who pulls out of run-off amid nationwide attacks on his supporters

2009: Amid economic collapse, swears in Tsvangirai as prime minister, who serves in uneasy government of national unity for four years

2017: Sacks long-time ally Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa, paving the way for his wife Grace to succeed him

November 2017: Army intervenes and forces him to step down

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Zimbabwe moved rapidly from being one of Africa’s biggest food producers to having to rely on foreign aid to feed its population.

In the 2000 elections for the House of Assembly, the MDC won 57 out of the 120 seats elected by popular vote, although a further 20 seats were filled by Mugabe’s nominees, securing Zanu-PF’s hold on power.

Two years later, in the presidential elections, Mugabe achieved 56.2% of the vote compared with Mr Tsvangirai’s 41.9% against a background of intimidation of MDC supporters. Large numbers of people in rural areas were prevented from voting by the closure of polling stations.

MDC activists were attacked around the country in 2008

With the MDC, the US, UK and the European Union not recognising the election result because of the violence and allegations of fraud, Mugabe – and Zimbabwe – became increasingly isolated.

The Commonwealth also suspended Zimbabwe from participating in its meetings until it improved its record as a democracy.

In May 2005, Mugabe presided over Operation Restore Order, a crackdown on the black market and what was said to be “general lawlessness”.

Some 30,000 street vendors were arrested and whole shanty towns demolished, eventually leaving an estimated 700,000 Zimbabweans homeless.

Squabbling

In March 2008, Mugabe lost the first round of the presidential elections but won the run-off in June after Mr Tsvangirai pulled out.

In the wake of sustained attacks against his supporters across the country, Mr Tsvangirai maintained that a free and fair election was not possible.

Zimbabwe’s economic decline accelerated, with inflation rates reaching stratospheric levels.

After hundreds of people died from cholera, partly because the government could not afford to import water treatment chemicals, Mugabe agreed to negotiate with his long-time rival about sharing power.

Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionThe power-sharing agreement was undermined by arguments

After months of talks, in February 2009 Mugabe swore in Mr Tsvangirai as prime minister.

It came as no surprise that the arrangement was far from perfect, with constant squabbling and accusations by some human rights organisations that Mugabe’s political opponents were still being detained and tortured.

Mr Tsvangirai’s reputation also suffered by his association with the Mugabe regime, despite the fact that he had no influence over the increasingly irascible president.

The 2013 election, in which Mugabe won 61% of the vote, ended the power-sharing agreement and Mr Tsvangirai went into the political wilderness.

While there were the usual accusations of electoral fraud – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked that these be investigated – there was not the widespread violence that had marked previous polls in Zimbabwe.

Successors

It was an election that saw Robert Mugabe, at the age of 89, confirm his position as the undisputed power in the country.

His advancing years, and increasing health problems, saw much speculation as to who might replace him.

But the manoeuvring among possible successors revealed how fragmented Zimbabwe’s administration was and underlined the fact that it was only held together by Mugabe’s dominance.

Mugabe himself seemed to delight in playing off his subordinates against each other in a deliberate attempt to dilute whatever opposition might arise.

With speculation that his wife, Grace, was poised to take control in the event of his death in office, Mugabe announced in 2015 that he fully intended to fight the 2018 elections, by which time he would be 94.

Image copyrightAFPImage captionHe was the undisputed power in Zimbabwe

And, to allay any doubt remaining among possible successors, he announced in February 2016 that he would remain in power “until God says ‘come’”.

In the event it wasn’t God but units of the Zimbabwe National Army which came for Robert Mugabe. On 15 November 2017 he was placed under house arrest and, four days later, replaced as the leader of Zanu-PF by his former vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Defiant to the end Mugabe refused to resign, But, on 21 November, as a motion to impeach him was being debated in the Zimbabwean parliament, the speaker of the House of Assembly announced that Robert Mugabe had finally resigned.

Mugabe negotiated a deal which protected him and his family from the risk of future prosecution and enabled him to retain his various business interests. He was also granted a house, servants, vehicles and full diplomatic status.

Ascetic in manner, Robert Mugabe dressed conservatively and drank no alcohol. He viewed both friend and foe with a scepticism verging on the paranoid.

The man who had been hailed as the hero of Africa’s struggle to throw off colonialism had turned into a tyrant, trampling over human rights and turning a once prosperous country into an economic basket case.

His legacy is likely to haunt Zimbabwe for years.

Post published in: Featured

Robert Mugabe will not be remembered as the freedom fighter who helped liberate Zimbabwe, but as a man who whose 40 years in power was anything but admirable, writes Melusi Nkomo.

In the future, when history is written about Robert Mugabe, it will not be about a black man raised by a single mother, who defied all odds in racially segregated Southern Rhodesia to pursue an education at the highest level.

Neither will it be a history of an articulate black African teacher turned politician who spent around a decade in prison for challenging white colonial racism and working for the betterment of black Zimbabweans.

It will be about the four decades that Robert Mugabe was at the helm of power in post-colonial Zimbabwe, in which his rule was anything but admirable.

As a young politician in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mugabe was by no means the most prominent of black nationalists who were fighting white colonial rule. Neither was he the most motivated. He was, however, the most eloquent, if not sophisticated.

For a clique of educated black elites, whose political and societal outlook was fashioned in mission schools, Mugabe was the man of choice to convey the message to white rulers – in voice and comportment – that blacks were no longer “uncivilised tribesmen”. They were sophisticated enough to deserve the franchise. In everyday manners and air, Mugabe was an “English man” who spoke their language in the shapely tone of an eloquent and “cultured” gentleman.

It is no wonder that when he arrived on the nascent nationalist scene, fellow nationalists noticed his gift of the gab and he was assigned the job of publicity secretary in their organisation, the National Democratic Party (NDP).

Then, Mugabe had come back home, presumably for holidays, from Ghana where worked as a teacher, with the intention to go back to West Africa. He may never have wanted to stay in Rhodesia for long. His entry into national politics, it seems, was made of anything but personal resolve. He became the reluctant latecomer who went on to dominate Zimbabwean politics for almost half a century.

Much of what people from outside Zimbabwe know about Mugabe started on April 18, 1980, when the colonial tether on Zimbabwe snapped, and the country gained independence from Britain. The popular story is that Mugabe, as a Marxist revolutionary, ushered in a new era of liberation and social progress, exemplified by the early enthusiasm in expanding the education and health delivery system for black people.

Even that narrative is misleading. Mugabe was neither a socialist nor a revolutionary.

When juxtaposed with other African post-independent social and political revolutionaries – Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Kenneth Kaunda, among other luminaries — Mugabe makes for an awkward comparison. For his time in Ghana, he indeed learnt very little from Nkrumah’s quest for a holistic social transformation backed by strong ideological convictions. Mugabe was a rebel, however one who wanted to replace white rulers for a self-interested political project. He tactfully did so, but not without copious doses of Machiavellism, if not outright wickedness.

He hated revolutionary talk, the same way he hated revolutionary garb. When he “talked revolutions”, it was expedient for his narrow political ascendancy to life presidency. When he donned revolutionary garb (even then, very briefly in the early 1980s for picture poses), he always unseemly added a tie to a safari suit. That is the furthest that he went. One could easily separate a nerdy Mugabe, socially distancing himself from his “less sophisticated”, but hands-on, peers who did not mind getting their hands dirty leading ideologically abutted socialist programmes.

A story is often told that Mugabe was quick to express his displeasure at the invitation of Bob Marley to perform at the Independence celebrations in 1980. It’s said he had wanted a pianist, preferably British, possibly Cliff Richard. Mugabe never hid his disdain for pot-smoking and dreadlocked black men, he instead marvelled at European classical musicians, especially Beethoven. I may sound like someone majoring on the minors.

As an intellectual, Mugabe was never a serious one, unlike his peers, Nyerere and Kaunda. His idea of intellectualism was confined to the uninspiring accumulation of certificates, academic or otherwise. His much-vaunted “seven university degrees”, many achieved through correspondence, were a testimony to this.

A cursory Google search of his “works” shows one collection of his speeches titled Neither our war of liberation: Speeches, articles, interviews, 1976-1979, but nothing intellectually intriguing.

His politics, therefore, lacked ideological robustness and many of his party and national programmes were not designed to outlive him. For that reason, he loathed any discussion about succession, and was violent to anyone posing any kind of threat to him as the Oberführer of the killing machine that his party, ZANU-PF, turned out to be.

It is easy to point out the expansion of social programmes, such as the education system and health services during the independence euphoria of the 1980s, as an example of Mugabe’s commitment to black people and socialism.

But people are usually quick to forget that throughout the 1980s, and with “Britain’s wilful blindness”, now we know, Mugabe sought to create a one-party dictatorship in the mould of the Kims’ North Korea.

He, in fact, invited North Korean military supervisors to help him create a private army brigade that hounded the opposition and committed one of the worst atrocities against African people in independent Africa. In the end, an estimated 20 000 civilians, most of them isiNdebele-speaking black men, women and children, lay dead in unmarked mass graves.

He thus had a bizarre “populism” that relied on force rather than the support of the masses. It was expedient for a self-interested political ambition but simply unsustainable. It began tottering from the 1990s onwards.

Faced with a fast-changing global political economy and louder demands for change at home, Mugabe’s “socialism” was exposed as a clumsy fraud that it was. Western donors who had footed part of his bills started isolating him, corruption in his government sprouted. The perceived glories of the 1980s went down the drain and with them went the social programmes.

Epidemic after epidemic also exposed the weak foundations of the healthcare delivery system; from HIV and Aids in the late 1990s, to cholera and typhoid in the 2000s.

Educated Zimbabweans hopped in desperation from one country to another, carrying wads of certificates that usually gave them minimum wage jobs if not “bullshit jobs”.

The Mugabe era education system specifically, was bad for the country. With it, he stifled critical minds and killed innovation. Schools taught people to cram for examinations and follow instructions down to a tee.

The most famous teacher in the village or township was one who whacked the hell out of children for failing a test. Most schools were a mirror image of Mugabe’s political modus operandi; whacking dissenters and ruling the country with a huge stick in hand.

Decidedly, in such school pupils passed with high grades, but out of fear. Fear of the teachers’ reprisals or in the case of college students, fear of being left behind when others got enough “qualifications” to skip the border after graduation.

Mugabe, a teacher trained in the 1940s and 1950s, when blacks weren’t expected or allowed to think critically, managed to oil and expand what his Rhodesian predecessors had left behind.

He flaunted this education system whenever he got the chance. It churned out a politically compliant population that loved instruction manuals and textbooks. Individuals recited what they memorised under the watch of an angry teacher – and ended up doing it with glee. That of course, was sometimes seen as a “sign of intelligence” among Zimbabweans.

In the early 2000s when I enrolled at the University of Zimbabwe, the campus was severely intimidated. Criticisms of the president and the ruling party were sporadic and minimal. Student activists and professors were cowed and afraid. Undoubtedly, some of the student activists were angered by the Mugabe regime, but a fair share, I suppose, took activism as an opportunity to, occasionally, get a decent meal, a T-shirt and an allowance at some NGO-organised students’ workshop. Or quite strategically, for a few, to find the easiest way out of the country through a “persecuted students” scholarship.

And I don’t blame them. Everyone was leaving, the country was on its knees, even government ministers’ children were scarpering.

Those who managed to skip the border to escape the hellhole that our country had become, made for lovely, smiling and articulate butlers and waiters that attended to tourists in places like Dubai and Cape Town.

Zimbabweans could, of course, read and cram the menu, enough to explain food recipes to visitors in impeccable English. They also made for the best implementers of NGO projects – whether or not they believed in their employers’ philosophies (most of the times we didn’t). They became the best foremen and machine operators on farms in South Africa’s Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces – because they could read and follow instructions on seed and pesticide packages.

Most never uttered any criticism, come rain come sunshine. Sadly that “culture” extended to politics of our nation. And Robert Mugabe knew that.

** Melusi Nkomo has a PhD from the Graduate Institute Geneva (Switzerland) and is a former fellow at the Center for African Studies at Harvard University.

** This was first published on Africa Is A Country in November 2017 and is published under a common creative licence.

Post published in: Featured

On September 4, 2019, CHRA Programmes Officer, Reuben Akili was heavily assaulted by municipal police officers for telling them that their heavy handedness on vendors was tainting the image of the council.

As if that was not enough, Akili was bundled into a council truck and was accused of stabbing a municipal police officer.

He was released after the intervention of a senior council employee.

Akili sustained injuries as a result of the assault.

This case will not go unchallenged.

We have since engaged legal experts who are working on the case and ultimately, we will seek to bring the identified culprits to book.

We will also engage council officials over the unruly behavior of municipal police officers who have turned into a militia and in the process, violating citizens’ rights in the city center.

In as much as we appreciate the role of municipal police officers, we are firmly against the use of force in the execution of their duties.

Municipal police officers have become notorious for extortion and abuse and as CHRA, we will work flat out to put this to an end.

Post published in: Featured

His death in Singapore, nearly two years after he was toppled from power, was confirmed this morning by current President Emmerson Mnangagwa. Reports in Zimbabwe say he died with his wife Grace at his side.

Mugabe had been in poor health, admitted to hospital in early April, apparently unable to walk and pictured looking extremely frail in photos alongside his son which may be the last ever taken of him.

Just a few weeks ago he reportedly asked to be buried next to his mother Bona on the family farm near Harare. He had refused a burial at the Heroes Acre, a North Korean-built monument where graves are waiting for him and his wife.

Mugabe was hailed by several African leaders today, many of whom stood by him despite the brutality of his regime. Mnangagwa hailed Mugabe as an ‘icon of liberation and said his ‘contribution to the history of our nation and continent will never be forgotten’.

But he will be little mourned by many of his countrymen who are now free to say so without fear of repression.

He came to power in 1980 as the founding leader of Zimbabwe, initially hailed as a liberator after the country became fully independent from British rule.

But his own reign was marked by murder, bloodshed, torture, persecution of political opponents, intimidation and vote-rigging on a grand scale and there was jubilation in the streets of Zimbabwe when he was toppled in 2017.

And under Mugabe’s leadership, which made him a pariah in the West, the economy of a mineral-rich country descended into chaos with thousands of people reduced to grinding poverty, many of them suffering from near-starvation and worse.

‘It is with the utmost sadness that I announce the passing on of Zimbabwe’s founding father and former President… Robert Mugabe,’ Emmerson Mnangagwa said today.

‘Mugabe was an icon of liberation, a pan-Africanist who dedicated his life to the emancipation and empowerment of his people. His contribution to the history of our nation and continent will never be forgotten.’

A hospital spokesman in Singapore said: ‘We are saddened by the news of the passing of Mr Robert Mugabe, former president of Zimbabwe.

‘Our thoughts and deepest condolences go out to his family and loved ones. We are unable to share further, out of respect for the privacy of Mr Mugabe and his family.’

Singapore’s Foreign Ministry said it was working with the Embassy of Zimbabwe to fly Mugabe’s body home to Zimbabwe for burial.

Mugabe died at 10.40am local time on Friday, diplomatic sources sadi.

Zimbabwean officials were spotted at a rear exit to the Gleneagles Hospital with undertakers from Singapore Casket, one of the country’s leading funeral directors.

Mugabe’s remains appeared destined for an undertakers’ parlour in Lavender Street, where a Mercedes Benz with diplomatic number plates was parked.

In what appear to have been the last photos of Mugabe, the former dictator was seen looking frail and weak alongside his favourite son in June.

Robert Jr, who spent much of his time with his father in his final months, shared photos of Mugabe looking slumped and shrivelled in a tracksuit, baseball cap and white beard.

The pictures are believed to have been taken in Singapore where Mugabe had been receiving treatment.

Mugabe’s visible ailments were often shrouded in mystery. Officials often said he was being treated for a cataract, denying frequent private media reports that he had prostate cancer.

Robert Junior had apparently been taping his father’s memoirs since Mugabe was ousted in 2017.

Despite Zimbabwe’s decline during his rule, Mugabe remained defiant, railing against the West for what he called its neo-colonialist attitude.

He enjoyed some support among peers in Africa who chose not to judge him in the same way as Britain, the United States and other Western detractors.

Today the South African government hailed him as a ‘fearless pan-Africanist liberation fighter’ and offered condolences ‘to the people of Zimbabwe’.

Kenyan leader Uhuru Kenyatta called him an ‘elder statesman, a freedom fighter and a Pan-Africanist who played a major role in shaping the interests of the African continent’.

The Chinese government, which was a staunch Mugabe supporter and has positioned itself as a powerful ally of Africa in recent years, today called him an ‘outstanding national liberation movement leader and politician of Zimbabwe’.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin also hailed him for his ‘great personal contribution to your country’s independence’.

Zimbabwe was one of the few countries that supported Moscow over its annexation of Crimea, voting against a United Nations resolution affirming the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Even Nelson Chamisa, the leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), declared that ‘a giant has fallen’.

‘Even though I and our party, the MDC, and the Zimbabwean people had great political differences with the late former President during his tenure in office, and disagreed for decades, we recognise his contribution made during his lifetime as a nation’s founding President,’ he said.

The U.S. embassy in Harare issued a more cautious statement, saying: ‘We join the world in reflecting on his legacy in securing Zimbabwe’s independence.’

British politician Peter Hain, who grew up in South Africa and was a prominent anti-apartheid activist in the 1970s, said Mugabe was ‘a tragic case study of a liberation hero who then betrayed every one of the values of the freedom struggle’.

Former British diplomat George Walden, who dealt with Mugabe in the talks that led to his rise to power in 1979, called him a ‘true monster’.

‘The first thing to be said is that one mustn’t speak ill of the dead, except when they killed as many people as Mugabe did,’ he told the BBC’s Today programme.

Mugabe’s later years were partly overshadowed by the ambitions of his wife Grace, whom he married in 1996 and who aspired to be President herself.

His first wife, Sally, who had been seen by many as the only person capable of restraining him, died in 1992.

The topic of his succession was virtually taboo during Mugabe’s decades-long rule but became unavoidable as he clung to power into his 90s and his health weakened.

The military finally intervened in late 2017 to ensure that Grace’s presidential ambitions were ended in favour of their own preferred candidate.

The coup sparked wild celebrations on the streets of Zimbabwe. Today people gathered in small groups as the news filtered out in Harare.

‘I will not shed a tear, not for that cruel man,’ said Tariro Makena, a street vendor. ‘All these problems, he started them and people now want us to pretend it never happened.’

An embittered Mugabe resurfaced last year to say he was backing the opposition candidate at the 2018 election, refusing to support Mnangagwa and his own former ZANU-PF party.

Mugabe was born in Southern Rhodesia, as the British colony was then known, in 1924 and his rise to prominence began when he joined a resistance movement against British rule in the 1960s.

He was jailed for his nationalist activities in 1964 and spent the next 10 years in jails and prison camps.

When his infant son died of malaria in Ghana in 1966, Mugabe was denied parole to attend the funeral, a decision by the government of white-minority leader Ian Smith that some experts say played a part in explaining Mugabe’s subsequent bitterness.

After his release, he rose to the top of the powerful Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, known as the ‘thinking man’s guerrilla’ on account of his seven degrees.

He became prime minister in 1980 of the new Republic of Zimbabwe and assumed the role of president seven years later.

During the 1980s Mugabe unleashed the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade on a rival nationalist group in a campaign known as Gukurahundi – ‘the rain which washes away the chaff’ – which killed some 20,000 people. His successor Mnangagwa was Minister for State Security at the time.

In 2000 he led a campaign to evict white farmers from their land, which was given to black Zimbabweans, and led to famine.

Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth in 2002 over accusations of human rights abuses and economic mismanagement and increasingly became an international outcast.

When Mugabe came to power in 1980, life expectancy at birth in Zimbabwe was 59.4 years, rising to 60.8 years in 1986, according to the World Bank.

It then crashed to just 44.1 years by 2002 – a devastating indictment of his rule.

Spry in his impeccably tailored suits, Mugabe as leader maintained a schedule of events and international travel that defied his advancing age, though signs of weariness mounted toward the end.

Mugabe retained a strong grip on power, through controversial elections, until he was forced to resign in November 2017, at age 93.

‘Only God will remove me’: How Robert Mugabe massacred his opponents and rigged elections to cling to power for 37 years and leave Africa’s former breadbasket in poverty

‘Only God, who appointed me, will remove me.’ These were the words of Robert Mugabe, the former President of Zimbabwe who has died today at the age of 95, at an election rally in 2008.

Mugabe swore that he would rule until his death and his longevity sparked fear and fury among the Zimbabweans who had fallen victim to his tyranny.

During his 37 years in power he rigged elections, trashed the economy and unleashed death squads that massacred thousands of his opponents, making him a pariah in the West and reducing thousands of his countrymen to grinding poverty and starvation.

In the end it was not God who removed him, but a coup by his own military generals, who finally tired of him and forced him to resign in 2017. His downfall sparked wild celebrations in Zimbabwe, a country which was once the breadbasket of Africa but which he left mired in economic crisis.

In his retirement he cut a pathetic figure, his health visibly declining. He bitterly refused to support his successor Emmerson Mnangagwa in the 2018 elections.

But Mugabe’s support was not to be underestimated. For many, he remained a figure of liberation and triumph over white minority rule and he drew admirers in Africa for taking a hard line with the West.

Mugabe was born on February 21, 1924, into a Catholic family living 40 miles west of Harare. He was born in what was then the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, which operated under white-minority rule.

As a child, he tended his grandfather’s cattle and goats, sang in church choir, played football and ‘boxed a lot,’ as he recalled later.

After his carpenter father walked out on the family when he was 10, the young Mugabe concentrated on his studies, qualifying as a schoolteacher at the age of 17.

An intellectual who initially embraced Marxism, he enrolled at Fort Hare University in South Africa, meeting many of southern Africa’s future black nationalist leaders.

His political rise began in the 1960s when he started to campaign for the colony’s independence from British rule. Jailed for his nationalist activities in 1964, he spent the next ten years in prison camps.

During his incarceration, he gained three degrees through correspondence, but the years in prison left their mark.

When his infant son died of malaria in Ghana in 1966, Mugabe was denied parole to attend the funeral, a decision by the government of white-minority leader Ian Smith that some experts say played a part in explaining Mugabe’s subsequent bitterness.

Smith’s white-minority government had declared independence in 1965 but Zimbabwe African National Union guerrilla fighters continued the struggle to end white rule.

Mugabe joined them after his release from prison in 1974, leading an armed struggle during which a number of rivals died in suspicious circumstances.

Mugabe swept to power in 1980, initially as Prime Minister of the newly-founded Republic of Zimbabwe, after white-minority rule was finally brought down under the weight of the insurgency and international sanctions. Tourism and mining flourished and Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of Africa.

Initially hailed as an African liberation hero and a champion of racial reconciliation, Mugabe soon revealed his true nature.

One of his rivals, fellow guerrilla leader Joshua Nkomo, was sacked from government in 1982 after the discovery of an arms cache in his Matabeleland province stronghold.

Not content with that, Mugabe unleashed the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade on Nkomo’s Ndebele people in a campaign known as Gukurahundi – ‘the rain which washes away the chaff’ – which killed some 20,000 people.

Mugabe, whose party drew most of its support from the ethnic Shona majority, changed the constitution to make himself President in 1987 and continued to solidify his hold on power. He waged a brutal military campaign against an uprising in western Matabeleland province.

It was the violent seizure of white-owned farms which finally turned Mugabe into an international pariah.

In the earlier years of his regime he consorted freely with world leaders, pictured at various times with the Queen, Princess Diana, Tony Blair and Hillary Clinton. From the 2000s onwards he was shunned by most of the West.

Land reform was supposed to take much of the country’s most fertile land – owned by about 4,500 white descendants of mainly British and South African colonial-era settlers – and redistribute it to poor blacks. Instead, Mugabe gave prime farms to ruling party leaders, party loyalists, security chiefs, relatives and cronies.

Violence reigned and much of the white population fled the country. Commercial farming collapsed. Harvests dropped by 40 per cent. There were fights for the maize that remained on the supermarket shelves.

Zimbabwe’s economy entered a downwards spiral, with inflation reaching billions of percent before the local currency was scrapped in favour of the US dollar.

The land reforms were widely condemned worldwide, with Britain’s then prime minister Tony Blair describing the attacks on white farmers as ‘barbaric’.

Mugabe hit back, calling Blair a ‘liar’ and an ‘arrogant little fellow’.

The insults didn’t end there. He called then US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice ‘that girl born out of the slave ancestry’ echoing ‘her master’s voice’.

Zimbabwe was suspended from the Commonwealth in March 2002, after Mugabe had been denounced for vote-rigging his own re-election.

Mugabe blamed Western sanctions for the economic collapse, although they were targeted at him and his cronies personally, not at the economy.

He lacked the easy charisma of Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid leader and contemporary who became South Africa’s first black president in 1994 after reconciling with its former white rulers.

However, his hard line with the West won him admirers and several African leaders paid tribute to him today.

‘They are the ones who say they gave Christianity to Africa,’ Mugabe said of the West during a visit to South Africa. ‘We say: “We came, we saw and we were conquered”.’

In 2008 Mugabe’s rule appeared threatened when he lost the first round of the presidential vote against his long-time rival Morgan Tsvangirai.

But Tsvangirai dropped out of the second round after a campaign of violence against his supporters and Mugabe was back in power.

After that election, the West mobilised against him, with former French president Nicholas Sarkozy saying point blank: ‘President Mugabe must go.’ But Mugabe bludgeoned his way to another election victory in 2013, aged 89.

‘I have many degrees in violence,’ Mugabe once boasted on a campaign trail, raising his fist. ‘You see this fist, it can smash your face.’

Mugabe’s later years were partly overshadowed by the ambitions of his wife Grace, whom he married in 1996 and who aspired to be President herself.

His first wife, Sally, who had been seen by many as the only person capable of restraining him, died in 1992.

Known for her elaborate spending sprees of up to £75,000, Grace had an affair and three children with Mugabe when his first wife Sally was dying of kidney disease.

Mugabe and Grace were billionaires. The rest of the country had no money or food. Marx’s Communist Manifesto lay in the gutter.

Even after 2008, when Mugabe was forced to form an inclusive government with the Movement for Democratic Change, tyranny continued.  Despite talk of cooperation, MDC officials faced arrests, imprisonment and torture.

It became illegal for two people in the country to meet and discuss politics without approval from the police.

The topic of his succession was virtually taboo during Mugabe’s decades-long rule but became unavoidable as he clung to power well into his 90s and his health weakened.

The military finally intervened in late 2017 to ensure that Grace’s presidential ambitions were ended in favour of their own preferred candidate.

The announcement prompted jubilant scenes in the capital Harare as the news spread and Zimbabweans took to the streets to celebrate the downfall of the ageing dictator.

Until his death aged 95, announced this morning, Mugabe had a luxurious retirement.

Though he disappeared from mainstream politics he was given a state residence, a private car fleet and free air travel.

An embittered Mugabe resurfaced last year to say he was backing the opposition candidate at the 2018 election, refusing to support Mnangagwa and his own former ZANU-PF party.

He was visibly frail in his final months and died in hospital today.

Loved and hated in almost equal measure by Zimbabweans, the former teacher was best known for leading Zimbabwe to independence, his controversial land reform programme, his hatred of any political opposition and his very glamorous young wife Grace.

Mugabe was reported to have died with such frequency in recent years that he boasted once that he had “beaten Jesus Christ because he only died once”. But as he became noticeably more doddery in his 90s, slipping twice in public in 2015, officials in his party began to campaign more openly to succeed him despite his very obvious displeasure.

The lonely former cattle herder and teacher ruled Zimbabwe with an iron grip from independence in 1980. He came to power on a wave of international goodwill, promising reconciliation with whites who stayed on in the former Rhodesia after a 12-year bush war. But the soothing platitudes turned sour.

In the early 1980s, he launched a brutal attack on dissidents in the southern Matabeleland provinces. Up to 20 000 villagers were killed by the president’s North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade in an operation known as Gukurahundi (The Rains that Sweep Away the Chaff).

Land redistribution 

It took him 20 years to offer any kind of apology. By then Mugabe had turned his sights on the latest threat: the newly-formed Movement for Democratic Change, led by former textile worker Morgan Tsvangirai.

Believing the party was to be bankrolled by Zimbabwe’s 4 000 white farmers, Mugabe embarked on a programme of land redistribution. Thirteen farmers were killed and tens of thousands of farmworkers lost homes and jobs in the grabs, which are ongoing.

Agricultural production plummeted, shortages set in and inflation began to climb, reaching at its apogee in 2008 an official 231 million percent.

When the MDC won most seats in major cities in parliamentary elections in 2005, Mugabe embarked on more retribution: sending out bulldozers to tear down shacks in Zimbabwe’s townships. The UN said 700 000 lost their homes or jobs in Operation Murambatsvina (Drive Out The Filth).Few were ever rehoused.

When he lost the first round of presidential elections to Tsvangirai in 2008, Mugabe’s security chief drew up a quick plan of attack. Two hundred MDC supporters were killed, leading Tsvangirai to pull out of the second round.

The ‘nearest woman’ to him 

The regional SADC grouping refused to accept Mugabe’s victory, forcing him into a coalition in September (though he made sure he and his allies gave up little power). Soon cholera was creeping through Zimbabwe’s wrecked townships, helped on by a public health system in tatters. At least 4 000 Zimbabweans died: Mugabe and his allies blamed the outbreak on Western sanctions.

In later years, Mugabe tried to soften his image, granting interviews to state media and, in December 2013, to the son of a South African freedom fighter, Dali Tambo.

In these carefully-choreographed pieces, viewers were treated to titbits of life chez les Mugabe: Grace enthusing about her husband rescuing her dairy project, Mugabe – less flatteringly – acknowledging that he chose his secretary because she was “the nearest” woman to him when his first wife Sally lay dying from kidney disease.

Grace suddenly took on a much bigger role in politics in 2014, after years as a demure shoe-shopper and philanthropist. She was instrumental in getting vice president Joice Mujuru fired in December 2014, officially for wearing a miniskirt and plotting to “kill” Mugabe (though everyone knew it was really because Mujuru’s popularity had become a threat to the first couple).

Brave leader 

As head of the Zanu-PF women’s league, Grace was given a right-hand seat in Mugabe’s Soviet-style politburo. Her insistence that she was senior to the two party officials who were named to the vice presidency after Mujuru’s unceremonious dismissal was at odds with her oft-repeated denials that she had any desire to take Mugabe’s place as president.

Mugabe himself stayed mum on the subject, though he occasionally appeared to suggest he had no control of his wife.

In much of southern Africa, Mugabe was seen as a brave leader who’d dared to challenge – and humiliate – white settlers by retaking their land. His popularity was harder to gauge within Zimbabwe, where he continued to win elections with overwhelming support from rural populations.

Significantly, Mugabe’s support base appeared to strengthen during the four years of the coalition as some tech-savvy urban youths grew disillusioned with Tsvangirai’s personal excesses and the corruption of low-level MDC councillors.

As he turned 90, the president became an unlikely fashion icon. Soccer supporters jostled to wear a “Hovhorosi-style” overall, emblazoned with the president’s signature.There were Mugabe T-shirts and Mugabe umbrellas. It was reported that if you managed to get a Mugabe signature on your car, you wouldn’t be forced to pay a bribe at a roadblock. But the fear remained. As the economy dipped again from 2014, frustrations mounted. Everyone knew he was on his way out: the only question was when.

Complex web of fear

Mugabe was called many things over the years by fed-up Zimbabweans. “Rotten old donkey” was a favourite term of abuse: “Robot Mugabe” was another. But bad-mouthing the president was a crime that could get you arrested. The scary thing was that in most cases the ‘insulters’ were shipped by ordinary Zimbabweans: bus passengers, shoppers at a supermarket till, fellow beer drinkers or members of a WhatsApp chat group.

Mugabe’s lieutenants maintained a complex web of fear, starting with his military generals and reaching down to the lowest level of informants. At the heart of the post-2000 crisis, Roman Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube – himself brought down in a CIO honey-trap – estimated that 1 in 6 Zimbabweans was in the pay of the secret service. The size of the secret service was never confirmed, but two reporters who dared suggest agents had been paid a yearly bonus at the end of 2015 when the rest of the civil service hadn’t, found themselves in police cells.

Mugabe had been ailing for a long time. As a reporter, you got used to the Has-he-gone-yet? phone-call late at night, the sighting of his military helicopter at a Pretoria health facility. Before Wikileaks the rumour in Harare was that he had syphilis. Then his personal banker, Gideon Gono told the US ambassador it was actually prostate cancer he was afflicted with, advanced and terminal. That was in 2008. As his doctors predicted, he took years to die, maintained by frequent trips for Far Eastern medical attention – and, no doubt, the grim knowledge that his party would likely implode without him.

His mother Bona had lived until well into her 90s: his genes were good.

– Compiled by Alet Janse van Rensburg

Post published in: Featured

PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEES SERIES 33/2019

Public Hearings Monday 9th to Thursday 12th August
on the Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Amendment Bill

The Portfolio Committee on Budget, Finance and Economic Development will conduct public consultations on the Money Laundering and Proceeds of Crime Bill (H.B. 4,2019) from Monday 9th September to Thursday 12th September 2019.

Copies of the Bill can be downloaded from the Veritas website using this hyperlink.

The public consultations will take the form of public meetings in Harare, Mutare, Gweru and Bulawayo in accordance with the programme shown in the table below.

Date	Place	Venue	Time
Monday 09 September	Harare	New Ambassador Hotel	2.00 pm
Tuesday 10 September	Mutare	Mutare Holiday Inn	2.00 pm
Wednesday 11 September	Gweru	Gweru Civic Centre	2.00 pm
Thursday 12 September	Bulawayo	Small City Hall	10.00 am

Attendance at the Public Consultations

Members of the public, interested groups and organisations are invited to attend these meetings and express their views to the portfolio committee members on the provisions of the Bill.  But any person wearing military uniform, signs of rank, flags or badges or political party regalia will not be allowed access to the meetings.

Purpose of the Public Consultations

Parliament is obliged by section 141 of the Constitution to facilitate public involvement in its legislative processes and to ensure that interested parties are consulted about Bills to be considered by Parliament.  Hence the holding of these public consultations by the portfolio committee.  The committee will in due course present a report to the National Assembly when it considers the Bill – and this report will, for the benefit of all MPs, include feedback received from those attending these public consultations.

The meetings, therefore, provide an opportunity for anyone to engage with the MPs on the committee to ensure that they are made aware of public opinion on the Bill’s provisions and any suggestions for changes that people feel should be made to the Bill.

Written submissions and correspondence are also welcome.  And it may be helpful to the committee if oral submissions made at a meeting are supported or supplemented by written submissions.  Written submissions can be handed in to the Parliamentary officials at one of the meetings.  Alternatively, anyone unable to attend a meeting can address his or her written submission or correspondence to:

The Clerk of Parliament

Attention: Portfolio Committee on Budget, Finance and Development

PO Box CY 298

Causeway, Harare

or have it delivered to Parliament at corner Kwame Nkrumah Avenue and Third Street, Harare or emailed to [email protected].

Queries and Further Information

Parliament’s telephone numbers are: (024) 2700181-8, 2252936-50.

Contact persons

Mrs Mataruka (Committee Clerk) :  extension 2062

Sibonisiwe Nkala (Public Relations Officer) : extensions 2310/2143

Fax: (024) 2252935

Veritas makes every effort to ensure reliable information, but cannot take legal responsibility for information supplied.

Post published in: Featured