Mimicking Mugabe: Zimbabwe’s false democratic project

New Zimbabwe.Com
By Mthulisi Mathuthu
Posted to the web: 18/10/2008 13:11:08

AS THE curtain slowly comes down on one of the vilest regimes of our time, it seems easy to cast President Robert Mugabe as a failed politician who blew a sure thing – veering off from being a gentleman of international standing into a petty tyrant.

Opposite this fallacy is the uncomfortable home truth: Mugabe is a successful and consistent politician who sought, got and kept power by any means necessary.

The magic behind this was a calculated combination of hate, bloodletting and deception which make it possible that in the post-Mugabe era, he will remain ‘the climate’ for many years to come.

So neat and tight has been this interplay that even his erstwhile masters in Whitehall and White House have had the embarrassment of scooping the egg off their faces.

One of the most dangerous legacies that Mugabe seems sure to leave behind and will continue for many generations to come is his ubiquitous quarrelsome brand of politics underlined largely by violence, hate, propaganda, obtuse scholarship and bootlicking.

If what has been happening in Zimbabwe in the last eight years is anything to go by, it seems clear that even when the veteran dictator finally goes or dies and the walls of Jericho finally come crumbling down, there won’t be any change at all and the Zimbabwe we seek will remain a dream. Instead, the new masters will just replace the current ones and march into the palace with their bootlickers, praise-singers, shock-troops and the other hangers-on in attendance.

Among them will be perfect matches for people like Tambaoga, George Charamba, Happyson Muchechetere, Webster Shamu, Vimbai Chivaura, Claude Mararike, Tafataona Mahoso, Munyaradzi Huni, Caesar Zvayi and other bigots — only that they will be singing for a different master.

A cursory look into the Zimbabwean body-politic will reveal that there are indeed traces of Mugabe’s way of doing business. This is not surprising since as recent as the late 1990’s most of the opposition activists still had the guts to purchase wholesale into Mugabe’s politics despite all the evidence of fascism.

Many people are so angry with Mugabe that they will go to awkward lengths to sound like democrats because they used to sing praises to a malevolent leader.

One of the most illustrative developments of our time has been the split in the MDC and the treatment given to both camps by journalists, analysts, activists and scholars (the lines between these are so thin that you need extra-powerful goggles to see them).

The varying treatment accorded to both Arthur Mutambara and Morgan Tsvangirai camps has underlined how Mugabe has succeeded in planting and germinating his brand of politics across the political architecture that exists in Zimbabwe.

Once the schism occurred in the MDC in 2005, the masters of spin came forth to cast the Mutambara crew as Mugabe’s stooges and Tsvangirai as a democrat.

Personal political miscalculation on the part of Welshman Ncube ceased to be what it was and was diligently commuted to treason. Mutambara is no longer a politician who failed to outmanoeuvre Tsvangirai but is a Mugabe stooge who committed a sin so unforgivable and unimaginable that he must deserve everything bad and cruel.

Human rights activists, lawyers, journalists and scholars from Geneva to Washington are all tumbling over one another in a scramble to be heard first denouncing these upstarts who wanted to derail the freedom train.

Like their opposites in Zanu PF, these scholars have chipped in to sift through all these insults and turned them into points of reference to mean that Mutambara, Davie Coltart, Ncube and Paul Themba Nyathi sold out like Abel Muzorewa and Ndabaningi Sithole.

One way to affirm one’s commitment to the revolution is no longer to attack Sithole but Mutambara and Ncube.

No evidence is required to substantiate the claim that Coltart — a well-up lawyer who spent many years exposing human rights violations, invariably inviting Mugabe’s ire — has now joined the tyrant to derail the march of democracy!

At work here is the kind of scholarship which turned Zanu PF propaganda from Maputo into academic effort, while at the same time concocting eulogies for certain politicians under the pretext of analysis.
Through Mugabe’s rule, we have come to learn that the most dangerous laws in Zimbabwe are unwritten and one of them is that war betides he who tries to oppose the hero of the time for he will soon be gone. A tonne of bricks will be hurled in his direction and those who think alike. They shall all be pulverised and there will be no trace of their remains.

In this way of doing business, democracy means that the gates to heaven will only be open to those who praise the hero of the times always and denounce the villain of the times always; anything else is treasonous and you will be called all sorts of names ranging from CIO through tribalist to nonentity.
As is well known, under Mugabe there can never be debate. The sum total of all this is that Mugabe emerges as having succeeded in fostering among us a culture of bootlicking, labelling, denouncing and blackmail.

A combination of failure to read through Mugabe’s designs and total dishonesty on the part of the electorate and the international community has ensured Mugabe’s success from the attainment of power to the securing his future.

It seems almost certain that Mugabe will not go to Hague for the 1980’s atrocities in Matabeleland. A huge chunk of Africa stands squarely behind him (never mind Khama and Odinga). He has survived everything that has been thrown at him — BBC, CNN, ITV and the entire Fleet Street edifice as a whole — not because of anything but by playing the victim and exploiting the inconsistencies in international politics.

The more the Western media (who shielded him during his 1980’s killings) excoriated him, the more he beat the drums of victimhood to a crescendo and earned himself the ears of many from the developing world.

A man who should have occupied his place in the annals of history as a malevolent tyrant is getting away with a claim to heroism. Yet his intention was never to serve to Zimbabwe but instead Zimbabwe had to serve him in his totalitarian project, and he succeeded.

All those who tried to outflank him are either dead or are in the political wilderness or will soon pay a heavy price. Here is a man who shouldn’t have been anywhere nearer power but should have been a professor of mass communication teaching specifically English, propaganda and public speaking now a few steps from becoming one of the top Africans! (Remember the New African survey?).

Add to that, his ways are commonplace within the Zimbabwean society where the more his victims say they hate him, the more they mimic him!

There won’t be any climate change in Zimbabwe after Mugabe – a political survivor who simply couldn’t lead but could divide and proceed. Witness the sure and undisputed candidate for Hague whistling past the gates of justice to safety.

This, by any standards, is success.

Mthulisi Mathuthu is The New Zimbabwe news editor and can be contacted on e-mail: thuthuma@yahoo.com

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