Zimbabwe: Women face discrimination in land ownership – The Zimbabwean

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KADOMA, Zimbabwe 

As Zimbabwe’s 1970s liberation war veterans seized white-owned farms about two decades ago, now 71-year-old Danisa Njovo suddenly became a proud owner of a five-hectare farm in Chakari area in the country’s Mashonaland west province. But although Agness, his wife, fought alongside her husband during the war, she owns nothing, not even the couple’s urban home in Kadoma.

Kadoma is a Zimbabwean town, 140 kilometers west of Harare, the country’s capital.

For many like 67-year-old Agness, because she is a woman, even claiming her compensation as one of the fighters during the war did not give any result, she said.

Even today, Agness said, she is amongst millions of women in this Southern African nation, who despite making significant contribution to agriculture on land literally owned by their male counterparts, still have no ownership rights to the farms, the means of production.

“I work on the farm with my children, a farm in my husband’s name and he is the one who goes to the market with our products and nothing in terms of property or land is in my name”, Agness told Anadolu Agency.

Similar to Agness, many women in Zimbabwe in both urban and rural areas have continued to bemoan unfair access to land and properties as they are sidelined.

Farms are being seized from white farmers, but do not benefit the country’s majority of women although the women make greater part of the country’s population with 60%, according to women rights organizations speaking on Zimbabwe’s land question.

Yet the UN’s new sustainable development goals that guide development efforts recognize the significance of property rights for women like Agness all over the world, mainly in rural areas.

According to Zimbabwe’s constitution, everyone has the right, in any part of the country, to procure, hold and dispose of all forms of property, either individually or in association with others irrespective of their sex, gender or marital status.

Even then, the Southern African country is a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women of 1979, the Beijing Platform for Action of 1995 and the SADC Gender and Development Declaration of 1997.

Despite Zimbabwe’s laws dispelling myths around gender disparities in terms of land and property ownership, the country’s rural women still stand out as the worst affected, according to rights activists.

“Poverty is worse amongst Zimbabwean women from rural communities because they make significant contribution to agriculture and are the mainstay of farm labor yet they own nothing nor earn anything from what they produce,” Catherine Mkwapati, a Zimbabwean feminist and director of the Youth Dialogue Action Network — a local civil society organization — told Anadolu Agency.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe, whose economy is agro-based, has 39.6 million hectares land area, very little of it owned by women.

Zimbabwe has an estimated population of 14 million people. According to country’s Gender and Women Affairs Ministry, out of roughly 14 million population, an estimated nine million are women of which 70% live in poverty.

For women rights activists like Mkwapati: “Zimbabwean men in particular continue to own land, govern women’s labor and make agricultural decisions supported by masculine social systems”.

The majority of women lack property ownership, and “women’s access to land is only through their husbands, fathers, brothers or sons,” said Mkwapati.

Trapped in similar situations, many Zimbabwean women have ultimately found it hard to gain equal access to land and property even under the country’s Fast Track Land Reform Program.

But corruption has also played a role in disadvantaging Zimbabwe’s women in land and property ownership, according to women rights organizations such as the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association.

“Zimbabwean women always and often are discriminated against in land ownership owing to factors like lack of access to capital, failure to get credit, lack of collateral, customary restrictions, and even lack of knowledge on how they can get land and title deeds,” Marylin Chikwaka, a lawyer from the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association, told Anadolu Agency.

Why Mugabe spent his last days in Singapore? – The Zimbabwean

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SINGAPORE – Former Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe spent his final days in Singapore at one of Asia’s best hospitals, more than 8,000 kilometres away from his homeland.

He died Friday aged 95 at Gleneagles Hospital, breathing his last while surrounded by family members, according to a relative.

Why would an African leader chose to seek medical treatment in faraway Singapore?

– Why Singapore? – 

Singapore’s reputation as a strictly-ruled country is conducive to privacy and lacks a paparazzi culture and an aggressive media.

Its healthcare system is reputed to be among the best in the world, offering a whole range of services from health screenings to high-end surgical procedures.

A controversial figure like Mugabe could expect no protesters to hound him, as Singapore has strict rules against political gatherings.

Up until his death, no one would even officially confirm the hospital where Mugabe was being treated, sending journalists on a wild goose chase in the early hours after the announcement in Harare of his passing.

– How long had he sought treatment in Singapore? –

Local media said he first sought medical treatment for a cataract problem in 2011 and returned in 2014 for another procedure. Since then, his visits became more frequent.

AFP journalists saw Mugabe at Gleneagles Hospital in 2017. It was the first time he has been seen in public since he was forced to resign after a military takeover brought a sudden end to his authoritarian 37-year rule.

He was back in Singapore in April this year as his health deteriorated and a relative said he was in and out of the hospital while in the city-state.

Mugabe’s nephew Adam Molai told reporters in Singapore the former leader was admitted at Gleneagles around a week before his death.

Molai said he died of afflictions related to old age.

– Who was with Mugabe when he died? –

Molai said the former leader “was surrounded by family” when he passed away and that he died “very peacefully”.

Mugabe also “spoke about how he loves his family” in his final days, Molai added.

– How much is a room at Gleneagles Hospital? –

According to its website, suites are priced between Sg$1,158 and Sg$7,588 (between R12,400 and RR81,000) daily, while the cheapest admission is in a four-bed ward at Sg$259.

– What are Mugabe’s other Singapore connections? –

Mugabe and his wife Grace travelled to Singapore to visit their daughter Bona, who studied in the city-state.

Both parents attended her graduation when she was awarded a masters degree in management, specialising in banking and finance.

Mugabe’s wife, dubbed “Gucci Grace” in the media, is also known for her lavish shopping sprees around the world. She was reported to have spent 8,800 pounds ($10,700) on a handbag in a Singapore boutique.

– Who else has sought treatment in Singapore? –

Former Myanmar military leaders Soe Win and Than Shwe sought treatment in Singapore at various times.

Former Indonesian first lady Ani Yudhoyono died at Singapore’s National University Hospital in June.

In 2003, 29-year-old conjoined Iranian twins Laleh and Ladan Bijani chose Singapore to have their separation surgery but both died after a marathon operation.

And in 2012, a student who was critically wounded after a gang-rape in New Delhi — a case that sparked national outrage in India — was brought to Singapore for treatment but succumbed to her injuries soon after her arrival.

How UK’s foreign policy efforts to dislodge Mugabe ended in failure – The Zimbabwean

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Britain’s 40-year effort to find a way to either influence or dislodge Robert Mugabe is one of the country’s great post-war foreign policy failures. It is a story spanning six UK prime ministers, nearly £1bn in aid and every conceivable strategy.

Whether the cause of that failure lies at the door of a colonial mindset in the Foreign Office, a failed land transfer policy, the collective weakness of the Commonwealth, a cowardly African political elite or simply the corrupt thuggery of Mugabe himself will be a matter of dispute for generations.

At the heart of the story is misunderstanding and apprehension, neatly illustrated by Lord Howard de Walden’s description of Christopher Soames on being told the latter was to be made Britain’s interim governor in Rhodesia during the colonial handover in 1979: “A cloud passed over his face, as if he could see himself being plucked of his plumed hat and being eaten by savages. There was no alternative to agree. Before leaving the building to face the press, he asked for another drink.”

Fears for Soames’s personal safety in Zimbabwe proved misplaced, but from the outset the Foreign Office had doubts about Mugabe, and how to respond to the manipulation of elections by his Zanu-PF party. Diplomats told Lord Carrington, the then foreign secretary, that the ballot rigging was blatant.

Carrington – who had been reluctant even to send outside election observers – demurred on calling for Zanu-PF to be banned from participating, in part believing, according to his biographer Christopher Lee, that Mugabe would not be elected.

When he was indeed victorious, and by a landslide, Carrington was reassured by the tone of Mugabe’s inauguration speech as prime minister, which preached reconciliation and forgiveness worthy of any 20th century liberation hero.

A policy of benign tolerance, and hoping for the best, ensued for nearly a decade. As late as 1988 Carrington wrote he had been fortified by Mugabe’s magnanimity and intelligence, seemingly unaware of the slaughters Mugabe instigated in his political rival’s power base, the two Matabeleland provinces of eastern Zimbabwe, from 1982 to 1987.

Above all, Carrington was reassured that Mugabe did not seem willing to tamper with the special protection sunset clauses in Lancaster House given to white Zimbabwean landowners at least for the first 10 years of independence, including provisions that the government of Zimbabwe would not engage in compulsory land acquisition but would instead proceed on a “willing buyer, willing seller” principle.

The warning signs for the British became unmistakable in 1992 when, with the economy stagnating, a compulsory land acquisition programme slowly started. But in many ways 1997 was the decisive year both for Zimbabwe, and its relationship with Britain, now led by a Labour government with an ethically-driven foreign policy.

Although Mugabe had won the 1995 elections easily, the arrival of a pressure group of war veterans demanding land soon made itself felt. In November 1997 Mugabe offered large one-off payments to each of the 70,000 “war veterans”, in addition to a monthly payment.

Tony Blair and then foreign secretary Robin Cook initially responded by convening a Land Donors conference to address the issue, but then pulled out of talks. Mugabe’s hatred of Blair started, as he accused the British of trying to engineer a coup by funding his political opponents.

As the Zimbabwean economy rapidly deteriorated, tensions over land reform reached boiling point in February 2000, when the government’s new draft constitution, which contained a clause providing for land acquisition without compensation unless paid for by the British government, was defeated in a referendum. Shortly thereafter, so-called “war veterans” invaded white-owned farms across the country.

As late as 2000 Cook offered an extra £40m to fund land reform. But he set conditions including “a fair price to the farmer” and reducing poverty among the working poor.

Labour believed Mugabe’s programme was not only unlawful, but corrupt. Half of all the farms redistributed since 1997 had gone to employees or members of the Zimbabwean government.

The shutters went down. Britain imposed an arms embargo against Zimbabwe on 3 May 2000. It halted the provision of 450 Land Rovers to its police force, withdrew the British military advisory training team and cut aid to Zimbabwe by one-third. An EU-wide travel ban was imposed on Mugabe and 19 members of his inner circle.

Blair did not just try isolation. He used the Commonwealth to urge Mugabe to sign a declaration at Abuja in 2001 and elsewhere later committing to democracy. But such words proved largely worthless when it came to actual elections won by Mugabe. Blair led the call to suspend Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth in March 2002. Mugabe never forgave him.

Since then all the weapons of diplomacy – quiet megaphone, economic, political, multilateral, unilateral – were used to weaken Mugabe, or strengthen his opponents in the stolen elections that have succeeded.

Short of using force, the British alone had the ability to wound, but never to end the Mugabe regime. Mugabe was repeatedly protected by other African leaders, notably the ANC in South Africa, that declined to criticise him on the grounds of non-interference and national sovereignty.

“Mugabe was one of those people the British empire created who specialised in knowing how to twist the British government’s tail,” Lord Hurd, another British foreign secretary, said: “He was well-trained in the art of annoying the British if he needed to. He knew our ways.”

Robert Mugabe killed the freedoms he had worked so hard for – The Zimbabwean

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“Wafa wanaka” – it is said that it is unAfrican to speak ill of the dead. But what choice does one have when the death of a once towering figure raises complex emotions, and not in a good way?

On 18 April 1980, Zimbabwe was born. In a colourful celebration that started the previous night at Rufaro stadium in Harare (then known as Salisbury), the independence flame was lit. Bob Marley sang Zimbabwe, a song he’d written at the invitation of the government. Hope filled the air as Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the nation’s first prime minister, took his oath of office and swore allegiance to the new nation. Julius Nyerere, the leader of Tanzania, prophetically cautioned Mugabe, saying: “You have inherited a jewel in Africa. Don’t tarnish it.”

Mugabe represented the birth and hope of a new era. Eloquent, ideologically clear and popular, he represented what many a Zimbabwean and parent at the time wished for the next generation. The optimism was not unfounded. Mugabe was a teacher by profession. He declared education a basic human right and changed the constitution to recognise primary and secondary public education as free and compulsory – a policy that woud reap dividends for decades to come. He preached unity, his aspiration for a non-racial society, and his belief in the rule of law and democracy.

It is the Mugabe of this moment that plunged many Zimbabweans into a feeling of conflict when his death was announced on Friday morning. While his legacy to many Africans across the continent is that of a revolutionary hero who championed the continent’s liberation struggle, this image of him presents an incomplete picture. Though he was admittedly a master politician, many Zimbabweans were killed, tortured and brutalised as he entrenched his insatiable grip on power. The unromantic part of his legacy must not be ignored.

While revolutionary and eloquent in his speeches, Mugabe tarnished a precious jewel with violence, economic mismanagement and repression. In the 37 years he ruled over Zimbabwe, a dark cloud of broken hope replaced the promise of a bright future. We were left poorer and damaged for it. His ousting in a coup orchestrated by some of his trusted comrades and generals was tragic but celebrated by the masses.

In the early 1980s, Mugabe’s proclivity for violence was already evident. Insecure about his enemies, he established the notorious Fifth Brigade, a military group that was trained by the North Koreans. Between 1983 and 1987, Mugabe deployed the brigade into Matabeleland, in the south of Zimbabwe. The brigade oversaw a campaign of beatings, arson, public executions and massacres. This period came to be known as Gukurahundi, a term drawn from a Shona word that means “the wind that sweeps away the chaff before the rains”.

The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace documented at least 2,000 deaths but estimated that figure was more than 8,000. Other groups believe the death toll could be as high as 20,000. Throughout his decades of rule, Mugabe never afforded justice to the survivors and victims of Gukurahundi, although he later acknowledged that “thousands” had been killed, and he called the massacres “a moment of madness”.

During the 1990s, Zimbabwe’s economy steadily contracted. Unemployment rose threefold, average wages were lower and, by 2000, living standards were a pale shadow of what they’d been in 1980. The economic crisis reached a climax in mid-November 2008 when year-on-year inflation reached 89.7 sextillion per cent. This period was characterised by food shortages, empty shelves and the failure of the Zimbabwean dollar.

In addition to the economic failure, Zimbabwe experienced a deep political crisis. Opposition figures and human rights activists were beaten, arrested, abducted and killed for daring to raise their voices against Mugabe. Elections were fraught with rigging and violence as Mugabe refused to give up power – the most brutal of these elections was in 2008.

One of the strategies devised by Mugabe to maintain his grip was a controversial land reform exercise, which began in 2000. It was high on the rhetoric of restoring land to the black majority, although in reality the land remained in the hands of the state, with the holders of the farms holding no title or security of tenure. Critics accused Mugabe of parcelling land out to political elites at the expense of ordinary Zimbabweans. More than 400,000 black farmworkers were also displaced during the exercise.

While many agreed that rebalancing land ownership was necessary, many also found fault with the “fast-track” manner in which this was done. The poor administration of the programme had a negative impact on the economy and the one-time “breadbasket of Africa”. Zimbabwe now, in the aftermath of Mugabe, faces a huge crisis and requires at least US$400m in food aid to avoid starvation.

When all is said and done, Mugabe’s legacy is a complicated, conflicted and problematic one. On the one hand, he will always be an African liberation icon. On the other, he presided over economic destruction and killed the freedoms he had worked so hard to give birth to. It will take many years to undo the system of repression that he created and which continues under his successor today.

While it is unAfrican to speak ill of the dead, Mugabe offers a cautionary tale to all in the continent of how not to destroy a jewel.

• Fadzayi Mahere is a Zimbabwean lawyer and politician

In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe’s Star Had Already Faded: ‘We Have Moved On Without Him’ – The Zimbabwean

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As he pushed into his 90s — growing visibly frailer by the week, stumbling ever more frequently at public events, his once eloquent speech becoming sluggish — people wondered, with a mixture of dread and hope, when “the old man” would be gone.

But on a warm summer morning in Harare on Friday, as Zimbabweans woke up to the news that their former leader had died at a hospital in Singapore, the reaction was muted. Many in the center of the capital saw his death through the prism of their difficult daily lives — not through the lens of history that Mr. Mugabe’s fellow African leaders emphasized.

“I’m sad that Mugabe has died with the economy,” said Agnes Humure, 37, a shopkeeper rushing to work in Harare’s central business district. “I personally don’t know who is going to wake it up.”

[Our obituary of Robert Mugabe, who as leader of independent Zimbabwe traded the mantle of liberator for the armor of a tyrant.]

CreditZinyange Auntony for The New York Times

The reaction was subdued in part because the once supremely powerful Mr. Mugabe had become increasingly irrelevant in the two years since he was expelled from power. Outmaneuvered by his successor and onetime right-hand man, Emmerson Mnangagwa, and growing rapidly weaker, Mr. Mugabe had been reduced to a ghostly presence in the country that his personality had dominated for nearly four decades.

“Mugabe’s death has come at a time when we have moved on without him,” said Richmond Dhamara, a 42-year-old street fruit vendor. “I don’t think he will be missed that much, because he is the same guy with the people who succeeded him — cruel.”

Mr. Mugabe’s reputation was sturdier elsewhere in Africa. Even after the worst excesses of his long rule, Mr. Mugabe drew standing ovations at African gatherings, where fellow leaders praised him as the last of the great liberation leaders.

“Words cannot convey the magnitude of the loss as former President Mugabe was an elder statesman, a freedom fighter and a Pan-Africanist who played a major role in shaping the interests of the African continent,” President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya said on Friday.

In central Harare, where the presidency and other branches of government are housed, Friday felt like a regular morning. People scrambled to work in dilapidated taxi minivans from the suburbs. Street hawkers were setting up their wares on sidewalks as part of the thriving informal economy that has replaced the collapsing formal sector.

No soldiers could be seen in the area, only the usual police officers — a clear sign that the Zimbabwean government did not regard Mr. Mugabe’s death as a political or security risk.

CreditBen Curtis/Associated Press

For most Zimbabweans, their emotions had reached a peak with Mr. Mugabe’s political death nearly two years ago. Countless people celebrated in Harare and across the country at the time, in a short-lived euphoria that faded with the ever worsening economy and disappointment over Mr. Mnangagwa’s tightfisted rule.

In many ways, Mr. Mugabe’s actual death was anticlimactic.

“I wish Mugabe should just have died in power, because things as they are now are much worse than before he was removed,” Jeremiah Gumbi, a 26-year-old money changer, said at his usual workplace in central Harare.

Even a supporter of ZANU-PF, Mr. Mugabe’s political party, on his way to party headquarters — where the national flag was flying at half-staff — was far from effusive in his comments.

“Old Bob is our hero,” said the party supporter, Tinago Mhanga, 38. “Although he messed up the economy, he is the father of the nation, even in death.”

Mr. Mugabe had spent the last two years mostly in quiet isolation after being deposed in a coup in November 2017. For a time, he was effectively put under house arrest with his family in his mansion in a leafy Harare neighborhood. He was regularly allowed to fly to Singapore, where he had sought medical treatment for years.

But an uneasy and unspoken tension persisted between Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Mnangagwa, the eternal right-hand man who had ultimately turned on his patron. For Mr. Mnangagwa, dealing with his predecessor was a delicate issue because of their long ties and shared political party. Mr. Mnangagwa generally treated the elder politician generously, hoping that Mr. Mugabe would support him, or at least stay quiet.

CreditZinyange Auntony/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Mugabe — as wily in retirement as he had been during his nearly four decades in power — remained strategically quiet. But whenever he felt that Mr. Mnangagwa was not treating him with the respect that he was due, Mr. Mugabe made it known.

At least once, his allies summoned foreign journalists based in nearby Johannesburg for a meeting inside his Harare home. His wife, Grace, helped the journalists slip into the house, past soldiers under orders to prevent Mr. Mugabe from talking to the news media.

Most significantly, during elections in July last year, Mr. Mugabe publicly expressed his admiration for the opposition candidate, Nelson Chamisa, the leader of ZANU-PF’s fiercest and historic rival, the Movement for Democratic Change.

But despite the hopes and prodding of his wife, Grace, and other allies now fallen out of favor, including the former information minister, Jonathan Moyo, Mr. Mugabe had become a political nonentity.

Little was heard from him in the past year as he grew more frail. Instead, his sons — famous partygoers whose public misbehavior forced their parents to move them from Dubai to Johannesburg in recent years — continued to make headlines.

What will become of Mr. Mugabe’s widow is unclear. Mr. Mugabe’s second wife, she is reviled inside Zimbabwe and, more important, inside the ruling party. Many of Mr. Mugabe’s longtime allies blamed her for her husband’s political excesses in recent years and for associating a once famously parsimonious man with the kind of luxury shopping and traveling that she enjoys.

In the year or so before her husband fell from power, Ms. Mugabe had sought to position herself as his successor and sideline Mr. Mnangagwa. That ultimately inspired the coup. Now, with her husband gone, Ms. Mugabe has little or no protection left in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe dies; liberated Zimbabwe, then held it for 37 years – The Zimbabwean

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FILE — In this Friday, Nov. 17, 2017 file photo, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe officiates at a student graduation ceremony at Zimbabwe Open University on the outskirts of Harare, Zimbabwe. On Friday, Sept. 6, 2019, Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa said his predecessor Robert Mugabe, age 95, has died. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File)

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Former Zimbabwean leader Robert Mugabe, an ex-guerrilla chief who took power when the African country shook off white minority rule and presided for decades while economic turmoil and human rights violations eroded its early promise, has died in Singapore. He was 95.

Mugabe enjoyed strong support from Zimbabwe’s people soon after he became the first post-colonial leader of what had been British-controlled Rhodesia.

Often violent farm seizures from whites who owned huge tracts of land made him a hated figure in the West and a hero in Africa.

His successor, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, tweeted word Friday that an “icon of liberation” had died. Mnangagwa, a long-time loyalist until Mugabe dismissed him from his Cabinet, named Mugabe as a national hero, Zimbabwe’s highest posthumous honor.

Leaders of the Black National Front Joshua Nkomo, left, and Robert Mugabe make a no-progress statement after their informal meeting with British chairman Ivor Richard at the Palais of Nations, Geneva, Switzerland, on Nov. 10, 1979. (AP Photo/Dieter Endlicher, file)

He said the nation would observe an official mourning period for its late leader, “a great teacher and mentor” and a “remarkable statesman of our century.” No date or other details were given.

Singapore’s Foreign Ministry said it was working with Zimbabwe on arrangements to fly Mugabe’s body home. In recent years, Mugabe sought medical treatment at Gleneagles Hospital in Singapore.

Presidential spokesman George Charamba told The Associated Press that Mugabe was readmitted to the hospital complaining of chest pains. His personal doctor, Dr. Jonathan Matenga, was flown to Singapore and with Mugabe when he died at 4:45 a.m. Friday, Charamba said.

Mugabe’s popularity began to rise again after Mnangagwa failed to deliver on promises of economic recovery and appeared to take an even harsher and more repressive stance against critics. Many began to publicly say they missed Mugabe.

Forced to resign amid pressure from the military, his party and the public in November 2017,

Mugabe was defiant throughout his long life, railing against the West for what he called its neo-colonialist attitude and urging Africans to take control of their resources — a populist message that was often a hit, even as many nations on the continent shed the strongman model and moved toward democracy.

A target of international sanctions over the years, Mugabe nevertheless enjoyed acceptance among peers in Africa who chose not to judge him in the same way as Britain, the United States and other Western detractors.

“They are the ones who say they gave Christianity to Africa,” Mugabe said of the West during a visit to South Africa in 2016. “We say: ‘We came, we saw and we were conquered.’”

Even as old age took its toll and opposition to his rule increased, he refused to step down until the pressure became unbearable in 2017 as his former allies in the ruling party accused him of grooming his wife, Grace, to take over — ahead of long-serving loyalists such as Mnangagwa, who was fired in November 2017 before returning to take over with the help of the military.

Spry in his impeccably tailored suits, Mugabe maintained a schedule of events and international travel during his rule that defied his advancing age, though signs of weariness mounted. He walked with a limp, fell after stepping off a plane in Zimbabwe, read the wrong speech at the opening of parliament, and appeared to be dozing during a news conference in Japan. However, his longevity and frequently dashed rumors of ill health delighted supporters and infuriated opponents who had sardonically predicted he would live forever.

Secretary of State George Shultz, left, and Zimbabwe Prime Minister Robert G. Mugabe walk to a car after Mugabe was greeted by Shultz on his arrival to Washington for talks on Sept. 12, 1983. (AP Photo/Bob Daugherty, file)

“Do you want me to punch you to the floor to realize I am still there?” Mugabe told an interviewer from state television who asked him in early 2016 about retirement plans.

After the fighting between black guerrillas and the white rulers of Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was then known, ended, Mugabe reached out to whites. The self-declared Marxist stressed the need for education and built new schools. Tourism and mining flourished, and Zimbabwe was a regional breadbasket.

However, a brutal military campaign waged against an uprising in western Matabeleland province that ended in 1987 augured a bitter turn in Zimbabwe’s fortunes. As the years went by, Mugabe was widely accused of hanging onto power through violence and vote fraud, notably in a 2008 election that led to a troubled coalition government after regional mediators intervened.

“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 was re-elected in 2013 in another ballot marred by alleged irregularities, though he dismissed his critics as sore losers.

Amid the political turmoil, the economy of Zimbabwe, traditionally rich in agriculture and minerals, deteriorated. Factories were closing, unemployment was rising and the country abandoned its currency for the U.S. dollar in 2009 because of hyperinflation.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe addresses people at an event before the closure of his party’s 16th Annual Peoples Conference in Masvingo, south of the capital Harare, Zimbabwe, on Dec. 17, 2016. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, File)

The economic problems are often traced to the violent seizures of thousands of white-owned farms that began around 2000. 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.

Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader, Nelson Chamisa, said he was “mourning with the rest of Africa” over the death of Mugabe in the African tradition of Ubuntu, or humanity toward others, calling him one of Zimbabwe’s founding fathers and a freedom fighter.

However, Chamisa, who leads the Movement for Democratic Change, also acknowledged the pain over “decades of political disputes” surrounding his governance.

“Memories really go to the deficits of governance, goes to the issue of human rights situation in the country, goes to the collapse of systems,” he said.

He also said Mugabe’s death on foreign soil is a “sad indictment” of the country’s economic situation.

On the streets of Harare, the capital, people gathered in small groups Friday and discussed Mugabe.

“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.”

Others said they missed him.

“Things are worse now. Life was not that good but it was never this bad. These people who removed him from power have no clue whatsoever,” said Silas Marongo, holding an axe and joining men and women cutting a tree for firewood in suburban Harare. They needed the wood to beat severe electricity shortages that underline the worsening economic situation.

Children play next to a defaced portrait of former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in Harare, Friday, Sept, 6 2019. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)

Amnesty International said Mugabe left behind “an indelible stain on his country’s human rights record.” Mugabe’s early years as a leader saw “notable achievements” through his heavy investment in health care and education, the human rights group said, but he later eroded his own track record.

“While casting himself as the saviour of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe inflicted lasting damage upon its people and its reputation,” Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for Southern Africa, said.

Mugabe was born on Feb. 21, 1924, in Zvimba, 60 kilometers (40 miles) west of the capital of Harare. As a child, he tended his grandfather’s cattle and goats, fished for bream in muddy water holes, played football and “boxed a lot,” as he recalled later.

Mugabe 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. But he drew admirers in some quarters for taking a hard line with the West, and he could be disarming despite his sometimes harsh demeanor.

“The gift of politicians is never to stop speaking until the people say, ‘Ah, we are tired,’” he said at a 2015 news conference. “You are now tired. I say thank you.”

If Death Expunges Bad Deeds, What Is Our Incentive To Reform? – The Zimbabwean

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It’s one of life’s terrible tragedies that powerful men who were once admired but lose their way never seem able to learn not just from such fictional but true-to-life stories, but from the real lessons of history that things rarely end well for those who brutalize their own people and abuse power. Robert Mugabe is hardly the first erstwhile national hero turned despot who died a bitter, lonely and tormented old man.

Sadly he will not be the last.

I read the message announcing Mugabe’s demise attributed to President Emmerson Mnangagwa this morning and could not help but wonder what this moment says to him and those who run our country now. Does this represent the final triumph for the Lacoste faction and their military backers to put their own brutal and ruinous stamp on the history of our country free of Mugabe’s shadow, or is this a moment that will make them change their ways and do the right thing?

At such moments, many of our people will choose to be charitable because speaking truth about the dead is supposedly “disrespecting the dead.” We are in this terrible mess in our country partly because our “culture” makes it difficult to speak truth to power. Its supposedly “unAfrican” (kushaya Hunhu/Ubuntu) and uncultured to speak truth to or about one’s elders and those in authority whether they are dead or alive! It is one of the tragic reasons we are often unable to solve family, community and national problems.

I am always puzzled by some of the things we choose to define us as Africans, and specifically why in order to prove the moral superiority of our culture, death has to expunge anyone’s bad deeds.

If this is indeed our culture, it would have to apply to everybody. If death absolves all bad deeds, then what would our incentive to reform while we are still living be? Why would we even bother fighting against the evil living?

If they will simply find redemption in death, if once they die we will simply absolve them in the name of Ubuntu and “Tsika Dzedu,” then the wizards and witches in our villages, and those who deny us our freedom, abduct, beat and kill the innocent (and that includes the monsters currently murdering other Africans in xenophobic attacks in South Africa) might just as well continue doing what they do.

It’s tempting to attempt to redeem Robert Mugabe’s legacy in order to make Emmerson Mnangagwa look worse. No one’s death can retroactively change history. Both men and their company are responsible for the current state of our country. The only difference is that one still has the opportunity to go a different way. The other one doesn’t.

I believe in honest grieving that does not devalue the tremendous pain caused by those who were once admired. I mourn the legacy of shame they leave their families and the nation.

I mourn out of frustration that a life once full of great promise could end in such an inglorious way. I mourn that a freedom fighter would leave a legacy of such brutal repression and that his leadership legacy would be people like Energy Mutodi who believe that Ndebeles are South African foreigners.

I mourn that after four decades of championing the economic empowerment of Africans, he would leave behind a country whose economy is run by thugs and is in ruins, while over 72.5 percent of the population is trapped below the Poverty Datum Line.

I mourn that after the Manpower Planning Survey of the early 80s and investment in education which resulted in our country being one of the most literate on the African continent, he would leave behind hopeless generations of graduates and 90% unemployment.

I mourn that Zimbabweans and Africans desperate for a pan-African hero would be put in a situation of being needlessly conflicted about whether Robert Mugabe’s rightful place is in the pantheon of heroes, or a villain who must be consigned to an eternal hall of shame.

It is my prayer that we would all be able to draw the right lessons from the lives of the departed and choose the right way.

Is There Not a Cause?

Cartoon: Welcome Mr Mugabe
Obituary: Robert Gabriel Mugabe, 21 February 1924-6 September 2019

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Obituary: Robert Gabriel Mugabe, 21 February 1924-6 September 2019 – The Zimbabwean

Posted on by TSA Press

Yes, we did love Robert Mugabe once – I perhaps more than others. We met in 1974 – I was 27, an idealistic young journalist, he, nearing 50, the iconic nationalist leader, embodiment of black hopes for justice and equality, just out of prison after 11 years’ incarceration without trial by Ian Smith‘s racial supremacists. He became my friend. I wrote his first biography – introducing him to the world through the syndication of the Argus Group.

But I find it hard to mourn him today. No tears have come. But I’m not celebrating either. My overall emotion is deep sadness – at what might have been, what should have been. Deep sorrow at the loss of it all, the waste of it all.

The horrors of Mugabe’s almost 40-year rule are well documented: bloodshed, injustice, the Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland, the brutal Murambatsvina bulldozing of the homes of the poor, stolen elections and ghastly election violence, violent land invasions and the destruction of a vibrant agricultural industry, the world’s highest inflation, 90% unemployment – to mention but a few. While all these were done on his watch, there is heated debate about the extent of his culpability – and consequently the nature of his legacy. Shakespeare’s Mark Antony said, ‘The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.’ Will Mugabe be reviled or revered by future generations?

On many occasions he was enthusiastically applauded by African audiences at international fora as an African hero, railing at the West, withdrawing Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth, insulting world leaders and daring to take the white man down a peg or two – even as Zimbabweans were suffering appalling human rights abuses and deprivation at home.

Even in death, he is still a divisive force. Social media today is awash with contradictory narratives and bitter disputes. One group maintains Mugabe ruined the beautiful and well-endowed country he liberated from colonial rule in 1980, reducing it to a begging bowl – with more than a quarter of the population in exile and where the world’s highest inflation and lowest life expectancy have reduced the noble ambitions of majority rule to blood-stained tatters.

Another hails his achievements, notably the liberation of the country from colonial rule, and progress in education and health for all in the early years. Even land reform, although bloody, chaotic and corrupt, has its defenders. And to be sure – land is now in the hands of blacks rather than whites, and the economy is largely under black control.

When and how did it all go so wrong? Other than absolute power corrupting absolutely, there are a few key turning points: the death of his Ghanaian-born wife Sally in 1992 was one. In 1996 he married his secretary Grace, with whom he already had two children. Forty years his junior, Grace was avaricious and ambitious, and her influence over the ageing, ailing Mugabe grew alarmingly to the point where she almost became Vice-President a few years ago.

The formation of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in 1999 put paid to his ambitions for a one-party state, and he regarded this as a major, personal insult. This was followed in 2000 by his loss of the constitutional referendum by which he sought to increase his presidential powers. His increasingly repressive regime met this setback with a ferocious reign of terror. Human rights were trampled on, the judiciary was emasculated, the independent media was gagged and the country turned into a virtual police state. Hordes of marauding youths recruited into state-funded militias, were unleashed to pillage, rape, beat and otherwise harass the defenceless, largely rural, population into submission to the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front.

Mugabe himself became increasingly intolerant of any form of criticism. I last saw him when I sat in the front row of a press conference in 2000 to launch his election campaign. By then, he had come to regard me as his enemy, because of my role in launching the independent Daily News, which was critical of his administration. He would not look at me. I remember the feelings of betrayal, disappointment and sadness that almost choked me. That was the day I mourned the death of my Robert Mugabe.

Shortly thereafter he played his ‘land reform’ card. Together with a rabble of so-called war veterans, the militias were used to invade more than 80% of commercial farming property in the name of returning land ‘stolen by white settlers to the people (black)’. What was seldom noted during the international media outcry at the time, was that more than 200 black farm workers were killed during the invasions in addition to the eight white farmers who made the headlines. Thousands more were beaten, tortured, raped and made homeless.

Beneath the racial/anti-colonial rhetoric lay a far more sinister truth. All those killed, black and white, had one thing in common – they were supporters of the MDC.

Mugabe increasingly disrespected the rule of law – threatening judges, refusing to obey court orders, and filling the bench with his sympathisers, who were given plasma television sets, farms, luxury vehicles and other perks.

Within a few years, Zimbabwe fell from its position as one of the most prosperous and hopeful of African nations to that of a basket case. The health and education systems, together with the sophisticated and diversified agricultural industry – once the pride of the region – collapsed. Some 25% of the population of 12 million – the intellectual and professional cream – left the country.

Following the coup that deposed Mugabe in late 2017, a new word was coined in Zimbabwe – ‘Mugabeism’. It stood for all that destroyed the ‘jewel of Africa’: systemic corruption, vote-rigging, human rights abuses, rampant nepotism and looting of state resources by those in power.

The key task facing Mugabe’s successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was to dismantle the entire patronage system, a complex web of intrigue, deceit, corruption and cruelty, with tentacles reaching through every echelon of society and every department of government. He has failed dismally to make inroads into any aspect of Mugabeism. The sad fact is that little has changed since the Mugabe era.

Holding free and fair elections is still pretty much impossible, given the wholesale Mugabeism that permeates the electoral process – from jerrymandering constituency boundaries to the wholesale falsification of the voters’ roll (which includes thousands of duplicates, thousands of dead people and thousands of people over 100 years of age), and the militarisation of the secretariat of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission. All this has seen our elections rigged, stolen and characterised by mass intimidation and violence for almost four decades – and nothing has changed.

As for the Gukurahundi massacres, Mnangagwa has made some superficial gestures such as allowing people to set up discussion groups (which was taboo under Mugabe). But the chances of a true and rightful reckoning – even with Mugabe dead and buried – are slim. The thing is, it was the Mugabe regime that perpetrated all these horrors. And the machinery of the Mugabe regime – the greedy old men addicted to power, the military, the militias, the youths, and the gravy train riders – is all still intact.

However, the head is now dead. Mugabe’s very existence – even as a decrepit old man in a hospital bed thousands of miles away from home – was a significant reality in the Zimbabwean psyche. Now that we are finally free of that oppressive presence, will we walk out into the sunshine or will we stay behind the bars?

Wilf Mbanga, 6 September, 2019

Mbanga in exile 20 years later, after he had fallen out with the Zimbabwean President
WILF MBANGA WAS THE FOUNDER OF ZIMBABWE’S THE DAILY NEWS, FOUNDER AND EDITOR OF THE ZIMBABWEAN AND THE ZIMBABWEAN ON SUNDAY, ZIMBABWE’S LARGEST CIRCULATION INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPERS BETWEEN 2006 AND 2012. HE LIVED IN EXILE FROM 2005 TO 2018 AFTER BEING DECLARED AN ‘ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE’ BY THE MUGABE REGIME IN 2004 FOR DENOUNCING ITS INCREASINGLY REPRESSIVE TENDENCIES.

www.thezimbabwean.co.uk

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