What a stroke of luck I wasn’t born in Zimbabwe!

When we are down, we can always feel better by comparing ourselves with the less fortunate. This isn’t a laudable habit, but I feel entirely human in doing that as the going only seems to get worse.

In this particular instance, I feel fortunate that I am not living in Zimbabwe right now, in which country the incumbent president has been recently re-elected for a seventh consecutive term.

It takes a huge stretch of the imagination what it must like to be ruled by the same man for thirty three years, especially if that man is a despot. Who else but a despot could rule, for so long?

Human nature is such that such long term power would turn even the best of leaders into tyrants as the mind loses all sense of relativity and focuses on the absolute.
It’s even harder to understand the minds of people who remain ruled by despots so long. Why don’t they rebel?



"Mugabe gained power as a hero in the civil war against Ian Smith’s rule. But it isn’t that popularity which has kept him in power"


What is it like to live in such a situation? In Sri Lanka, things are as bad as in Zimbabwe; but we still have no idea though we might learn this in the future.
Zimbabweans pay 66% of their earning as taxes (ZANU-PF cronies are exempt). In our complacency, we compare statistics. Ours are always better than Zimbabwe’s. But we fail to see that we have gotten into the same mindset, fallen into the same mental rut.



"Mugabe openly told members of the Supreme Court that, if they wanted to rule against his wishes, they could do so after resigning"



It’s easy to ask why Zimbabweans don’t rebel. This is because all opposition is crushed early and easily, and people either intimidated or bribed into compliance, and Mugabe’s citizens won’t be free even when he dies because, though he has no designate successor, his oppressive machinery is firmly in place.

Fortunately, despots are not immortal. Stalin ruled from 1924 to 1953, which is shorter than Mugabe’s record. Mao Ruled China for 27 years. Gen. Franco ruled Spain for 36 years. Kim Il Sung ruled North Korea for 48.9 years, while Fidel Castro did one better by ruling Cuba for 50 years. Kemal Pasha of Turkey ruled for 19 years. He was an exception because of his progressive reforms, but people forgot that the state-organised massacre of Turkish Armenians occurred during the early years of his rule.

Mugabe is 82 now and may not live long enough to beat Castro’s record, but without any doubt millions of Zimbabweans are looking forward to his funeral. Benevolent or otherwise, why do people choose to live under despots?

A despot’s legacy is more important than the length of his rule. Stalin murdered millions but laid the foundation of an industrialised Soviet state, without which the country would have been defeated by Nazi Germany. Mao left China an economic shambles but with a coherent government and bureaucratic structure which ensured that China didn’t collapse following his death.

Franco’s rule was brutal but did not entirely wipe out political opposition, which ensured that democratic government emerged after his death. Castro’s rule severely limited personal freedoms and economic growth but left behind a notable legacy in education, health care, culture and sports. Kemal Pasha turned Turkey into a modern state where women ceased to be mere chattels, but his army carried out a programme of genocide against the Armenian minority.

Kim Il Sung oversaw a hard-working, industrialised country till the 1960s but went all wrong from there, lapsing into military megalomania and leaving behind a pariah state with a starving, terrified population. Zimbabwe under Mugabe belongs to this category; only difference being that Mugabe doesn’t have military ambitions and pretends to hold ‘free and fair’ elections.

He became prime minister in 1980, as the former ‘Rhodesia’ became free of renegade Ian Smith’s rule after a bitter civil war in 1987. He’s been there ever since, holding free and fair elections, the latest of which was held recently. His ruling NANU-PF party claimed 61% of the vote.

What Mugabe doesn’t mention is that four million Zimbabweans live in exile, from South Africa and Botswana to Los Angeles. It’s a safe guess that most of them, if not all, would vote for opposition leader Morgan Tsvangari. Zimbabwe has only 13 million residents and less than half (6.3 m) are registered voters.

In February this year, the African Commission on Human Rights and People’s Rights, an international body, ordered Zimbabwe to allow the diaspora to vote by postal means. As usual, Mugabe ignored the order, which means that almost a third of the total population couldn’t vote.

Mugabe gained power as a hero in the civil war against Ian Smith’s rule. But it isn’t that popularity which has kept him in power for so long. The young men who admired him in the 70s are now old, destitute and bitter – unless they have become ZANU-PF cronies who thrive by corruption and turn a blind eye to the plight of their fellow citizens who must pay for medical fees and medicine by barter, with chickens and goats.

Mugabe suppresses all opposition with total ruthlessness. Opposition members are blacklisted from jobs, tortured, murdered and women raped. Opposition leader Tsvangari has an unenviable job, trying to win elections which are completely rigged. Voters’ rolls are neither accountable, nor visible. The visible ones contain names of people who died many years ago.

Mugabe suffered heavily from colonial oppression. The son of a poor farmer and educated at a Jesuit mission, he spent much of his youth in Ghana, in exile. When his son died of malaria, he was in prison and wasn’t allowed to attend the funeral. Through he professes to admire Nelson Mandela, what Mugabe didn’t learn from Mandela was the art of forgiveness and reconciliation.

 Five years ago, the situation was so farcical that Tsvangari decided not to run, and Mugabe got an additional term without any race. Once, he pulled out due to intimidation. A lorry crashed into his vehicle a few years ago. Tsvangari survived, but his wife died, in the same suspicious atmosphere in which the president of ZANU-PF died, paving the way for Mugabe’s presidency.

What can be proven will remain unproven in a country where Mugabe openly told members of the Supreme Court that, if they wanted to rule against his wishes, they could do so after resigning. The vulgarly lavish lifestyles of Mugabe and his second wife, and their cronies, are well-documented.

It’s a startling about turn for a socialist freedom fighter who vowed to free his country from colonial oppression and poverty. Mugabe reserves much of his hatred, however, towards Zimbabwe’s dwindling white community and the West. His remarks about them are always poisonous. “The only white man you can trust is a dead one,” he once said. But the following remark sums up his attitude towards the law: “Our votes must go with our guns. After all, any vote we shall have, shall have been the product of the gun.”