ROBERT GABRIEL MUGABE: DICTATOR OR 'DELIVERER'? By Asithandile Gxumisa

  

Quite like the seasons, men come and go. And quite like the lonely, fleeting wisp of cloud across the sky the length of their lives is woefully miniscule. Often, as the Biblical Job once lamented while in the grip of deathly sorrow, they are also "full of trouble". Robert Gabriel Mugabe, who was no stranger to trouble and whose familiar voice shall never again be heard, went the way of all flesh on the 6th of September, in a Singaporean hospital, at the age 95.

Death, be it of a cold murderer or a delightful friend, is always a sad affair. Judging by the shock and the countless words of condolences proffered to the family of Mugabe, it is clear that his own death did strike a chord with great multitudes. However, his legacy as both the leader of the struggle against British colonial rule in the former Rhodesia and as the leader of postcolonial Zimbabwe has come under sharp scrutiny over the last few days.

As it often is with men of his historic stature, there exists great differences about what folks think of his contribution to his own people. President Cyril Ramaphosa lauded him as a "gallant leader of Pan-Africanism". Well, at least now I am not in the least ashamed to know that I am not a Pan-Africanist ideologue. The president of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, the "light of Kenya", said that he would remember Mugabe as a man of "courage who was never afraid to fight for what he believed in even when it was not popular". Perhaps it would be more accurate to substitute "even when it was not popular" with "even when it was to the detriment of his own people". But maybe I am missing something here.

The current president of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa, the "crocodile", who once found himself on the receiving end of Mugabe's fiery ire, graciously called him an "icon of liberation". All these colourful words of praise are all very touching, but alas they paint a far too disingenuous picture of Mugabe's true legacy. Anyone who knows something about anything will recall that Zimbabwe is, as I write, a cold and dark cesspool of pauperdom, oppression and immiseration. Many have fled the horrors of the country for better lands - many more have sought asylum in our very own.

Two Zimbabwean citizens on eNCA had only unkind words for the man whose prowess at guerrilla warfare is a stuff of legend. They cried much over Mugabe's heavy-handedness towards his own people and his failure to lift many of his people out of poverty. One recalled how Mugabe essentially turned the "Breadbasket of Africa" into a wasteland of famine and want. This, as any student of history will remember, occurred at the turn of the 21st century when Mugabe notoriously encouraged Zimbabweans to seize white-owned farms, and violently if they must. This resulted in severe food shortages, famine and dramatic economic decline from which the country of diamonds continues to suffer. 

A great number of Ndebele-speaking people of Zimbabwe have absolutely no good memories of the man who presided over bloody massacres that claimed the innocent lives of tens of thousands of their kinsfolk. In a series of mass murders by the North Korean-trained 5th Brigade that began in early 1983 and ended in late 1987, more than 20 000 Ndebele civilians lost their lives through targeted torture, pogroms, indefinite detentions and genocide. A monstrous act of evil that must have sent the blackest pits of Sheol into roars of demonic guffaws. In Zimbabwe the massacres are called the Gukurahundi - a name as black as the hearts of all the men who orchestrated the whole hellish thing.

Well, as you may well know, Mugabe went on to live out his full life in comfort and safety, behind him leaving a trail of death, sorrow and despair. This is sadly a far too common tale across our fallen world which troubled the spirit of the prophet Jeremiah and had him earnestly pleading thus with his Lord: "Righteous are you, O Lord, when I plead with You; yet, let me talk to You about Your judgements: why does the way of the wicked prosper? why are those happy who deal so treacherously?" At such times running to the theodicy of suffering often leaves us with more questions than we first started with. However, I would not be a Christian if I did not believe that there was a grain of truth in Martin Luther King Jr.'s words when he famously declared before hopeless American multitudes: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice".

Thus I can confidently say on behalf of the forgotten Ndebele victims of Gukurahundi: Robert Mugabe may have escaped justice on this side of the grave, but justice will most certainly be served him on that other side without fear, favour or prejudice! He may have "delivered" his people from British imperialism, but he delivered them into a dictatorship that wrecked their country, humiliated his people more and drove them out of their homelands. If this phony and fawning praise of Mugabe continues, I am afraid the only lesson that will be learnt by current African dictators is that they can brutalize their own people and still be fondly remembered as great "liberators" or "deliverers". I respectfully refuse to take a part in such Orwellian buffoonery.