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WHY MUGABE ‘WON’ AGAIN By The just concluded elections in Zimbabwe have once more exposed the double standards, which the West routinely applies when dealing with issues concerning the Third World in general and Africa in particular. Suddenly, Robert Mugabe became an object to be loathed, demonized and callously castigated from New York to London and Paris to Brussels under the guise of election monitoring. Any discerning observer should have noticed that their grouse with Mugabe actually lay elsewhere.
Only an incurable fool would believe, hook line and sinker, that the BBC and other Western media that strenuously lampooned the recent electioneering processes in Zimbabwe did so out of legitimate concern. No one is deceived by the hypocrisies that abundantly characterized the disproportionate campaigns of calumny against the unquestionably irresponsible regime in Harare because none of those currently shedding crocodile’s tears over the turn of events in Zimbabwe meant well for the country or the concept of democracy altogether. They had their motives, and for us, none meets the test of bona fide. People who did not notice anything wrong with the historical Florida elections in the US a few months ago in which thousands were unlawfully disenfranchised nor see the monumental injustice playing out in the Middle East under which the Israeli government is killing, dispossessing and humiliating the Palestinians have forfeited the moral right to pontificate on matters emanating from Africa whenever things do not go their way.
To put our intervention in its proper perspective, we must begin by admitting that President Mugabe personally deserves the bad names and tongue lashing that he got over the recent elections. As an African, the philosophy of elderly self respect ought not to have been lost on him: an old man that hunts rabbit with kids must be prepared to be insulted. And because Robert Mugabe, the hero of 1980 did not know when to call it a day but kept on hunting rodents with kids in the open Zimbabwean grassland, he thereby unwittingly allowed very many little kids, so to say, to thoroughly abuse him. Martin Meredith’s literary account of the evolution of modern day Zimbabwe in his 'The Past is Another Country: Rhodesia to Zimbabwe' provides a handy rendition of the making of Robert Mugabe and his place in the history of that country. Sadly, at least, momentarily, all that seems to be in jeopardy by the aging comrade’s failure to quit the stage while the ovation was on.
Before addressing the theme of "why Mugabe won again", it is perhaps proper that we dispose of our charge that the Western media were not sincere when they cried foul all along the electoral path even when there were no just reasons yet to do. What was at stake in that election was neither Robert Mugabe nor Morgan Tsvangirai but something that represents the enduring vestiges of the old racist era. It is just one word: LAND. The stage-managed capital flight, the collapsing economy and the mirage social vicissitudes now plaguing that country are only parts of the same retaliatory package traceable to the land question.
It is an indelible part of the unfortunate history of Rhodesia that the white supremacists, true to their colonial ideology, seized all the fertile lands of Africa and forcefully ejected the African lawful owners to barren and wholly useless lands forcing them to become mere laborers and farm hands. This was the case in most of the Southern African countries where there were no hostile mosquitoes to assist the natives to repel the gluttonous and greedy alien invaders in which the apartheid South Africa and the Ian Smith’s UDI of Southern Rhodesia provide the well-known cases.
The one incontrovertible problem many people validly have with Mugabe is his unwillingness to relinquish power to other "comrades" within the ZANU-PF cadre. By monopolizing power several years after gloriously winning independence from the white minority regime through a prolonged and bloody liberation war, he seems to have lost the moral platform on which to continue to hold sway in a country where there are many able and fitter younger successors. Such sentiment cannot however be associated with the political party that he represents – the ZANU-PF which is the outcome of the merger in 1987 of the late Joshua Nkomo led ZAPU, a tactical process which started in the run up to the independence election in 1980 when the two guerrilla based parties merged into the Patriotic Front (PF). So, trying to dislodge the ZANU-PF from power so soon after independence in Zimbabwe would just be as difficult as dislodging the ANC from power in South Africa, what with the lasting legacy of the Nelson Mandela, the Madiba, and the new realism even within the ranks of the old racist Boer infested National Party now shamelessly decamping to the ANC in drove.
The opposition that confronted Mugabe, the Movement for Democratic Change, MDC, for short, does not have the historical ancestry and the political clout needed to uproot the ZANU-PF from power. Although it has very strong and fanatical followings in Harare and Bulawayo, the two major cities in the country, it is however largely unknown in the expansive rural areas where majority of Zimbabwean live. The party leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, the former secretary-general of the powerful, Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, is very popular amongst the urban dwellers and amongst the whites that saw in him a redeeming compromise on the volatile land issue. But Tsvangirai is not Frederick Chiluba. As a matter of fact, the MDC manifesto dealing with the vexed issue of land merely promises to set up a Land Reform Commission that will review the land question in a legalistic manner, a veiled refutation of Mugabe wholesale approach. Of course, most rural Zimbabweans whose lives seemly depend on the land were bound to see that as a ploy to unfairly perpetuate white monopoly of the best lands in the country.
Another major drawback for the MDC is that the party made itself look as if it was going to be an agent for the re-colonialization of the country by the whites minority as it unnecessarily struggled to be seen as the party that would do the bidding of the white farmers who do not fully accept the obligations of Zimbabwean citizenship as they continue to regard themselves as Britons by holding on to their British citizenship. It is significant to note that the MDC manifesto promises to do away with the ban on dual citizenship, a legislative weapon the Mugabe regime had applied to deal with those whites snubs that refused to accept wholeheartedly Zimbabwean citizenship. Little wonder therefore that MDC got considerable support from the white landowners and their cousins in Europe and elsewhere, a fact that must have alienated the party from those who continue to remember the evil of racism and the continuing injustice in global politics.
It was therefore not a surprise to most people that Britain and other Western powers within the Commonwealth had attempted to pre-empt the electoral process in Zimbabwe by applying what they call ‘smart sanctions’ against the Mugabe regime. But for Obasanjo and Mbeki, the ploy of the Europeans to covertly avenge for the plights of their white cousins in Zimbabwe would have been clinically effected. Many people wrongly criticized the African members of the Commonwealth for blocking that biased move. On a proper evaluation, however, Presidents Obasanjo and Mbeki did the right thing. Neither Tony Blair nor his Australian counterparts care a hoot about democracy or the well being of the ordinary Zimbabwean.
I totally agree with those who have contended that Mugabe personally does not deserve such a favor from Nigeria judging by the sustained official hatred of Nigerians in that country. Of course, Mugabe cannot claim ignorance of the fact that for a long time now, xenophobic tendencies have been unfairly applied against Nigerians in that country by the government-controlled press apparently forgetting the enormous sacrifices Nigeria and Nigerians made toward their liberation. Even South Africa, sadly enough, since the days of Mandela has not been different. Nigerians are routinely hunted down as the enemies of the new South Africa. I have been told by some of my South Africans friends that their people are victims of the white-controlled press misinformation, which continuously drum the lie into their ears that Nigerians are criminals, drug dealers and job snatchers. In spite of this, Nigerians are not going to fall into the same myopism of their southern African brothers and refuse to acknowledge where the justice in the current imbroglio in Zimbabwe lies.
The West simply wanted to demonize Mugabe and the entire political system simply because of his new stance on land redistribution. By adopting an unnecessarily tough stance against the taunting opposition, he played into the hands of his enemies who had all along perfected and international ambush against the Harare. People seem to have conveniently forgotten that Britain did not completely honor her pledge to pay for the compensation on lands that would have to be redistributed from the whites who had unfairly apportioned the bulk of the lands to themselves. Asking Mugabe to foot the bill for such exercise is like asking the owner of a stolen items to again pay for its redemption, something which tantamount to double jeopardy. The election was, no doubt not flawless, but it was certainly not as bad as the western arrogant and evidently biased monitors would want the world to believe. It is instructive to note the disparity in the reports of the election monitors: While the European observers continuously cried foul, their African counterparts who saw the same elections rated the results as reasonably free and fair. This difference is remarkable. It was therefore funny to read all the hypes and false alarms about the Mugabe ‘plans to rig the elections’ well before the process actually began.
Yes, Mugabe has over-stayed and should retire. But that decision should be left to his sense of self-respect and the will of the people of Zimbabwe who appear to be tolerating his sit-tight-ism. But for the BBC to sit coolly inside Bush House in London and be asking its agents in Harare if war, mayhem and riots have not yet broken out in that country is not only tendentious but equally insulting to Zimbabweans because we can easily recall that as hot as the Florida electoral contest was, no one asked if mayhem has already been let lose or if war has broken out there. That is probably why Mugabe, the Methuselah of Harare, won again. Cambridge, US March 2002
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