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Issue 00526 |
July 12 - 18, 2008 |
issn 0856 - 9135 |
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Politics |
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MUGABE'S ANIMAL FARM
By Nafata Bamaguje
For those not familiar with that Orwellian classic, Animal Farm is about a group of farm animals who rebelled and freed themselves from their human farm owner, only for the farm animals to suffer more heinous oppression by a cabal of murderous tyrannical pigs. This George Orwell novel is classically interpreted as satire of the 1917 Russian revolution that supposedly worsened the plight of Russian people; but it also aptly applies to Mugabe's Zimbabwe and to some extent much of post-colonial Africa. Although it is politically incorrect to say so in a public medium such as this, many concerned Africans (particularly among the older generation) sometimes lament that we were better-off under colonial rule. Mugabe's Zimbabwe gruesomely epitomizes this sordid disturbing ignominy of post-colonial Africa - in the murderous league of Idi Amin's Uganda, Bokassa's Central African Republic, Macias Nguema's Equatorial Guinea and Mobutu's Zaire. Less vicious, sit-tight African oppressors also abound viz; Cameroun's Paul Biya, Gabon's Omar Bongo and of course Nigeria's despotic kleptocrats - Abacha, Babangida and Obasanjo. Not to forget the Omar el-Bashir led, genocidal quasi-Arab, Islamo-Nazis in Khartoum, who are intent on exterminating our Black African brothers & sisters from Darfur. The tepid response of other African leaders to the Zimbabwe crisis and their reluctance to condemn Mugabe is therefore not surprising as there is something of a Mugabe in many of them. Little wonder Morgan Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwean opposition leader recently sought refuge in the Dutch embassy, not in an African embassy – a sad indictment of failed African leadership in the Zimbabwean catastrophe. Nigeria’s President Yar Adua, who as leader of the largest black nation and frontline state during Zimbabwe's independence struggle should be at the forefront of resolving the Zimbabwe crisis, has been conspicuously reticent as he lacks the electoral legitimacy and moral authority to call Mugabe to order. Conversely, it is noteworthy that Botswana, which has been an exemplary bastion of multi-party African democracy, had no difficulty condemning Mugabe's recent "re-election" as illegitimate. The Western world is also complicit in the Zimbabwe calamity. By failing to robustly denounce despotism and electoral robbery in other African nations (Nigeria, Cameroun, Kenya) as vehemently as they do in Zimbabwe, they not only embolden Mugabe, but play right into his hands feeding his racist propaganda - from which he derives modicum of credibility - that he is being picked on because of landless White Zimbabwean farmers. A few years ago, a flurry of Western condemnation trailed Mugabe's demolition of houses in Harare that rendered thousands of Zimbabweans homeless. At about the same time Nigerian president Obasanjo, in contravention of court orders demolished numerous houses in Abuja that rendered thousands of Nigerians homeless, but not a word of protest from the West. Cameroun also witnessed such demolitions and the West said nothing. Such double standards by the West suggest ulterior motives that partly explains the reluctance some of Africans to join the West in publicly denouncing Mugabe in spite of his unspeakable brutality. In the 1970s, black people all over the world resolutely supported the struggle of black Zimbabweans to emancipate themselves from the White minority rule of Ian Smith's Rhodesia. In Nigeria the Murtala – Obasanjo junta nationalized British assets to pressurize UK on the issue; University student unions were fully mobilized almost to a point of dispatching volunteer soldiers to help emancipate out oppressed black brothers and sisters in Rhodesia, Namibia and Apartheid South Africa; the late Bob Marley and our own Ozzidi king, Sonny Okosun sang about it. Consequently our expectations about the nascent Black nation were high when at independence in 1980, ZANU's Robert Mugabe who had come to personify the independence struggle became Zimbabwe's leader; particularly as the White colonialists left Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe was then called) a prosperous breadbasket even with the disruptive guerilla liberation war. Mugabe was to however disappoint us, as over the succeeding 28 years of independence, he gradually ran aground her once prosperous economy with ruinous policies that culminated in the worst hyperinflationary economic meltdown in contemporary world. Not even war-torn Somalia that has been without national government for almost two decades witnessed such economic disaster. Robert Gabriel Mugabe has become a disgrace and an embarrassment to Black people the world over – White colonialists left Zimbabwe a prosperous bread basket and our "Black Nationalist" ruined it a la Orwellian Animal farm. The consequence of Zimbabwe's economic collapse has been massive influx of Zimbabweans into neighbouring African countries especially South Africa, where the massive migration that compounded South Africa's Black unemployment and precipitated the recent xenophobic attacks on other black Africans. In order words Mugabe was indirectly responsible for the xenophobic attacks on blacks in South Africa. Consequently, the conspiratorial silence of Thabo Mbeki, South Africa's President on Mugabe's ruinous tyranny is baffling even as the adverse consequences of the Zimbawean disaster spill over into South Africa. This AIDS-denying caricature of a leader, who deludes himself that the xenophobic attacks were just about criminals, is obviously out of touch with reality. Whatever debt of gratitude South Africa's ANC owes Zimbabwe for her help during the anti-apartheid struggle is to the Zimbabwean people not Mugabe as an individual. Thus black South Africans are morally obliged to repay Zimbabweans by helping to kick out Mugabe, whose tyranny is much worse than Apartheid South Africa ever was. This would be the more responsible course of action rather than xenophobic violence against fellow Black Africans. With the benefit of hindsight, it is obvious that Mugabe was never the glorious Black Nationalist in the mould of Kwame Nkrumah, Mwalimu Nyerere, Nelson Mandela or Sam Nujoma; which he was erroneously touted to be. Post-independence Zimbabwe has revealed him to be a self-serving, narcisstic opportunistic tyrant who hijacked Zimbabwe's independence struggle for his megalomaniac self-glorification. Mugabe inordinate ambition to indefinitely perpetuate himself in power knows no bounds. He has killed, maimed, massacred, tortured and starved his compatriots just to remain in power and continue glorifying himself as a heroic, anti-colonial African liberator. Such is the psychopathic narcissism of our so-called "black nationalist".
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