Category: News Feeds

Officials and family members are arguing over the arrangements for the burial of Robert Mugabe, the former Zimbabwean president who died in Singapore last week aged 95.

High-ranking members of the ruling Zanu-PF party are understood to have told Mugabe’s close family that his remains should be interred at a hilltop monument outside Harare, the capital, following a ceremony at the nearby national stadium, where dozens of prominent African leaders would be present.

However friends and allies of Mugabe’s second wife, Grace, have said that the late dictator made it clear he would prefer to be buried at his home town of Zvimba, about 60 miles from Harare, with only close relatives in attendance.

They said that Mugabe, who was ousted in a military takeover in November 2017, did not want his death exploited for political gain by his successors.

Mugabe’s remains have yet to be repatriated from Singapore, where he died in a private clinic. Many of his close family members are there, including his widow, along with a team of senior officials.

Last Friday evening, Emmerson Mnangagwa, president of Zimbabwe, declared Mugabe a “national hero” and ordered days of mourning before the burial. He did not give any details of funeral arrangements, but his choice of words suggested he wanted to see Mugabe buried in the National Heroes Acre, a monument to the heroes of the war that overturned the white supremacist regime in the former British colony.

Designed by Zimbabwean and North Korean architects, the plot has a commanding view of Harare and features a huge bronze statue of three guerrilla fighters and an eternal flame on a 40-metre tower.

Though much of Mugabe’s 37 years in power was marked by violence, economic mismanagement and corruption, the former guerrilla fighter is still revered as a liberation leader. Many in Zimbabwe see him as a national hero, remembering his role in the war against white rule.

Flags flew at half-mast yesterday, but there were no public activities to mark the death of a man whose legacy includes a shattered economy, pariah status on the international stage and a repressive political system dominated by the ruling party.

The state-run Herald newspaper, which vilified Mugabe when he was forced to resign and when he subsequently voiced support for the opposition, carried glowing tributes.

In a “commemorative edition” the newspaper, which often acts as a mouthpiece of the government, praised Mugabe for “his uncompromising stance when it came to the rights of Africans”.

A major ceremony and burial at the National Heroes Acre would allow the new rulers of Zimbabwe to showcase their respect for the man they ousted after nearly 40 years in power.

“It would be very awkward for Mnangagwa and others if the funeral is in Zvimba and a family affair … They have always justified their actions as targeting those around [Mugabe], not him, and made a point of treating him well. This is the last act and they need to get it right,” said Blessing-Miles Tendi, an associate professor of African politics at Oxford University and author.

 Zimbabwe’s current leader Emmerson Mnangagwa has declared Mugabe a national hero, but not everyone agrees. Photograph: Aaron Ufumeli/EPA

Officials said they were surprised at the apparent bitterness that had caused the former dictator to shun a state funeral. A senior party official told the Observer: “The family is being engaged intensely. The funeral is state funded, all expenses paid to Singapore and back, so that should aid the process.

“There have been discussions before on this matter … It has been going on for months now. Before such news gets to the public, a long process of engagement takes place.

“The five family members who went to Singapore have yet to come back, and those who are here are also engaging in discussions among themselves.”

Mugabe’s relatives are themselves also divided over the location and nature of the funeral. The late president’s nephew, Leo Mugabe, said a decision had yet to be taken but denied that his uncle had given explicit instructions about his final resting place.

“We are just waiting for the repatriation of the body before the full programme is known. We also had never discussed with my uncle before he died where he wanted to be buried so it’s still unclear,” he said.

A spokesman for Zanu-PF, Simon Khaya Moyo, said a Heroes Acre burial was inevitable for Mugabe unless his family decided otherwise.

“The body is not yet here so we cannot be certain on the burial arrangements,” Moyo said. “The family is already discussing among themselves. He was declared a national hero and ordinarily he should be buried at the National Heroes Acre but it’s up to the family and up to what he wanted himself, which we will only know when the body arrives.”

Mugabe was the most prominent surviving member of the generation who fought to free their countries from European colonial rule in Africa.

“The death of Mugabe signals that the era of the 1960s liberation movement leadership is drawing to a close,” said Piers Pigou, an expert on Zimbabwe with the International Crisis Group.

Millions of Zimbabweans now face malnutrition, soaring inflation, up to 80% unemployment and a crumbling infrastructure. Medicines are in short supply and power cuts are common.

“End of an era as Mugabe dies, leaves Zim poor, divided,” read the front-page headline of a privately owned newspaper in Zimbabwe, the Daily News.

Tendai Biti, a former finance minister and opposition politician who was tortured by Mugabe’s henchmen, said the dictator was a product of an era of struggle. “He was a victim of the system he created. The revolution ate its own children and he was the first-born child of that revolution,” said Biti, who is an MP and vice-president of the Movement for Democratic Change.

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.”

“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