(Last Updated on March 4, 2016 by Editor)
ZIMBABWE – Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe celebrated his 92nd birthday on the 21st of February this week marking a major milestone for a mortal whose life has bestrode his country and continent’s political landscape like a colossus.
Many people have different perspectives about Mugabe but for most Zimbabweans, he is the man who has come to personify their long held struggle against political and economic domination from the country’s former colonisers – Britain.
And to most in Africa, Mugabe has become an enduring symbol of African resolve to assert their dignity and has continued to speak against the skewed international arena that denigrates the African voice.
It is no wonder that wherever he has gone, either as the African Union or SADC chairperson Mugabe has been received rapturously as a hero who against all odds has become the lone continental voice of conscience.
While the West would always want to create an image of Mugabe as a monstrous dictator, most Africans identify not just with Mugabe’s stance against the West but also with his roots as a simple village boy raised by his mother, Mbuya Bona, under the stewardship of Roman priests – the Jesuits at Kutama Mission in Zvimba District north-west of the then Salisbury, in Southern Rhodesia.
Born on February 21, 1924, Robert Gabriel Mugabe is the third of the six children born to Gabriel Matibiri and Bona, both of whom were Roman Catholics. His elder brother, Michael, died when he was very young in 1934 while his father went to look for work in Zimbabwe’s then most industrious city of Bulawayo.
Mbuya Bona was left to care for the young Mugabe and other siblings including enrolling the young Mugabe at Kutama Mission where he fell in love with his books. After Kutama, the young Mugabe attended Fort Hare University in South Africa. After completion of his degree, he came back to the then Rhodesia and taught at various schools including Hope Fountain and Tegwane Mission.
He later went to teach in independent Ghana, where he was enmeshed in Marxism and African nationalism. After returning to Southern Rhodesia around 1960, Mugabe became publicity secretary for the National Democratic Party (NDP), then led by Joshua Nkomo, a former trade unionist.
After the banning of the NDP in 1961, Mugabe became the publicity secretary of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union also led by Nkomo. ZAPU had a short life for it was soon banned and went underground.
Following disagreements on how to executive resistance against white rule, Mugabe was part of a core group which included the late Enos Nkala, Edgar Tekere and Ndabaningi Sithole that broke away from ZAPU to form the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and became its secretary-general.
In the midst of colonial resistance, Mugabe married fellow teacher Ghanaian Sarah Hayfron and had a son Nhamodzenyika who died of cerebral malaria in 1966.
In 1964, Mugabe and other fellow nationalists were arrested by Rhodesian authorities and he spent 10 years in prison. His love of letters blossomed in prison where he studied among other programmes law from the University of South Africa and the University of London by correspondence. His astute leadership and adept intellectualism saw him being elected leader of ZANU after a vote of no confidence in Ndabaningi Sithole’s leadership.
After his release from prison in 1974, Mugabe and Tekere daringly crossed to Mozambique in the dead of the night assisted by the late Chief Rekayi Tangwena, a legendary traditional leader known for leading resistance against colonial attempts to displace him with his people from the Gairesi Ranch in Manicaland province, on the border with Mozambique.
Upon arrival in Mozambique, Mugabe assumed the leadership of the ZANLA guerillas whose military leadership comprised of the late Josiah Magama Tongogara and Rex Nhongo. It was in Mozambique that ZANLA forces launched military raids into southern Rhodesian and inflicted so much casualties on the side of the colonial side that Ian Smith agreed to negotiate first at the Geneva Conference and later at Lancaster House in London, which culminated in the holding of general elections resoundingly won by Mugabe and his ZANU party.
One of Mugabe’s major milestones as a leader was in the manner in which he halted early internal disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands provinces caused by former disgruntled PF-ZAPU cadres who had turned dissidents. Without any outside mediation, Mugabe consummated the Unity Accord together with ZAPU leader Nkomo in December 1987, which brought peace and tranquility, a feat that even the country’s detractors hailed as the mark of an astute statesman. The new amalgamated party became ZANU-PF with Mugabe being the President and Nkomo together with the late Dr Simon Muzenda being co-Vice Presidents.
In 1987, the position of Prime Minister was abolished and Mugabe assumed the new office of executive President of Zimbabwe. Mugabe has consistently won elections in 1990, 1996, 2002, 2008 and 2013.
Mugabe added another feather on his cap through his ability to expand the education sector to cater for the previously marginalised majority black Zimbabweans, a feat that has made the country have the highest literacy rate on the continent.
Between 1989 and 1994, Mugabe was forced to dismiss ministers and party associates when corruption was revealed at the highest levels of government. Faced by an opposition largely sponsored by white commercial farmers and the former coloniser Britain, Mugabe embarked on the land reform which was meant to correct historical injustices where indigenous blacks were displaced from fertile lands to give way to minority whites that numbered not more than 5000 yet occupied 75 percent of arable land.
Irked by Mugabe’s insistence on the fast track land reform programme, Britain and its European allies, including the US, imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe, a development that has since stifled economic growth for the landlocked country. Through Mugabe’s leadership, Zimbabwe was to promulgate the Look East policy premised on utilizing the historical relations cultured during the struggle with countries in the Eastern bloc, particularly China and Russia.
It was the Look East policy that was to stabilise the economic prospects of Zimbabwe much to the chagrin of Britain and the US which wanted to install a new regime through their sponsored proxy – the MDC led by former trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai.
Despite Western vilification, African states have continued having confidence in Mugabe’s leadership as exemplified by his taking over the leadership of both the African Union and SADC. It was during his reign that he reinforced the need for harnessing local resources in funding the two organisations instead of relying on external donors. He also emphasised the need to accelerate the continent’s industrialisation through beneficiation and value addition of the continent’s resources. Besides the issue of value addition, Mugabe has advocated the reformation of the United Nations Security Council which he said lacked the current demographic balance. All the issues raised by Mugabe resonated well across the continent and what is left is for African states to once again reignite the pan-African spirit that united them in the fight against colonialism to fight global economic disparities.
The quest for unity has always been a universal sentiment that spurred nationalistic thought and galvanised people in achieving greater heights.
Sun Yat-Sen is still regarded as the father of the Chinese nation because of his unshakable belief in unity.
Even the Pan-Arabism and Ba’athist movements were also ideologically premised on the idea of unity of the Arab nation.
Closer to our times, the European movement of the World War II period also carried this view of unity as a central tenet in achieving greater goals. It is, therefore, no surprise that nationalists like Mugabe view unity as the central and undying theme in ensuring that Africans triumphantly achieve economic development and political autonomy.
Indeed, it is an observation that one of the key issues that have remained an unfinished project on the conscience of Mugabe is the continued fragmentation of African states.
President Mugabe’s exasperation with the lack of African unity was aptly captured in his speech at a luncheon soon after his inauguration on August 23, 2013. In that speech Mugabe lamented the way people of Africa have lend themselves to control by Western powers.
“We are no longer strong. We sit with Westerners in their forums to decide on action against other African countries. We should never do that. But that happened.
When we had an attack on Libya, we had three (African) countries in the Security Council, which agreed with Western countries that there should be action taken against Libya under Chapter 7 of the Charter of the United Nations, which allowed NATO to come and we know what happened. The situation there is in turmoil.”
Among his audience were former Presidents Kenneth Kaunda, Thabo Mbeki and Festus Mogae.
With a recognisable tone of frustration, President Mugabe evoked the spirit of the founding fathers of African Unity whose ethos risked being completely erased by Western dominion.
So what has gone wrong? What has impinged the dream of a united African voice?
Why has the European Union, which borrowed a lot from the OAU, managed to speak with one voice when it comes to issues concerning security and their survival and yet Africans have failed to agree even on mundane issues?
Indeed, what has led to the failure to institutionalise a firm, universal and concrete African unity?
Many hoped that Nkrumah’s speech at the Old Polo Ground in Accra on March 6, 1957 where he announced that “the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked with the total liberation of Africa” — was to set the tone for real substantive unification of all African states but alas this has remained just a mirage.
Although Nkrumah’s policy and pronouncement led to the creation of facilities or various sorts for the prosecution of the anti-colonial struggles with the Bureau of African Affairs in Accra becoming the focal point of activity in support of the struggles led by people like Joshua Nkomo (Rhodesia), Felix Moumie (Cameroon), Holden Roberto and Agostinho Neto (Angola), Eduardo Mondhlane (Mozambique), Milton Obote (Uganda), Sekou Toure of Guinea and Modibo Keita of Mali, the verve diminished following the rift between the Monrovia and Casablanca groups.
In the words of Kwesi Kwa Prah in: The Wish to Unite — The Historical and Political Context of the Pan-Africanist Movement, “the split between the Monrovia and the Casablanca groups in 1961 underscored the entrenchment of divergent interests and different views to the way forward.”
It came as no surprise then that the birth of the Organisation of African Unity on May 1963 was more of a continental (regional) association than a federation of states as Nkrumah had envisaged.
In its Charter, the OAU simply expressed the wish to promote unity and asserted the sovereign equality of all member states and upheld the non-interference in the internal affairs of member-states.
In other words the genesis of the contradictions that have stalled real tentative unity among member states must be contextualised within the framework of notable speeches by two major protagonists of that era.
In his address to the Ghana National Assembly on August 8, 1960 against the background of the crisis the background of a crisis in the Congo created by the presence of Belgian troops and the secession of Katanga province, Nkrumah argued that; “The African struggle for independence and unity must begin with political union.
A loose confederation of economic co-operation is deceptively time delaying.
It is only political union that will ensure uniformity in our foreign policy protecting the African personality and presenting Africa as a force important to be reckoned with.”
Mugabe is a true living legend who deserves a coveted place in the canon of African nationalism and liberation.