Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence by Stephen Chan

Author:Stephen Chan [Chan, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: history, Africa, General, political science, Political Process, Leadership
ISBN: 9781838608873
Google: 1-iWDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2019-04-18T23:26:31.556127+00:00

PART THREE

THE OLD MAN’S RUTHLESS STAND

EIGHT

Mugabe’s Path of Discomforts: One – Disease, War, the Constitution

THE NEW DRAMATIS PERSONNAE

Tendai Biti Shadow Foreign Minister for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC); legal counsel for Margaret Dongo and Ndabaningi Sithole

The Daily News Well-produced independent newspaper with high production values and high-level journalism

Chenjerai Hunzvi Polish-trained doctor, once married to a Polish woman; leader of the ‘war veterans’ and partial to the nickname Hitler; would die, almost certainly of AIDS

The Zimbabwe Mirror Weekly newspaper edited by Ibbo Mandaza, critical but partial to ZANU-PF; mouthpiece of the technocratic wing of ZANU-PF; high production values and well-written backgrounders

Jonathan Moyo Former professor of political science; sometime democrat and author on democracy; newly appointed minister in Mugabe’s government and first-line apologist for Mugabe

Robert Mugabe President, embattled, bitter, ruthless; not someone who should be demonised, but increasingly haunted by the ngozi, spirits or demons of the past

Morgan Tsvangirai Former trade union leader, increasingly presidential, leader of the new opposition MDC

* * *

Let us, you see, carry out this act once and for all. Those who will support, support, those who will want to sabotage, let them sabotage. We will go through that path of comforts and discomforts and we will evolve measures ourselves in the process of remedying that.1

Mugabe made that statement in 1992 as the Land Acquisition Act was racing through the Zimbabwean parliament. The ‘once and for all’ was delayed some eight years; then land acquisition – seizure – erupted in early 2000. By then, Mugabe had come under sustained pressure and attack over a number of epochal changes and, indeed, the period 1998–2002 was a new epoch for Zimbabwe. It is recounted and analysed here in three major parts: the first concentrating on the constitutional battle, but also covering the war in the Congo; the second to do with the fledging of the MDC as not only an opposition party but a significant parliamentary opposition party sweeping the Matabelelands and the cities in the 2000 elections; the third dealing with the land issue proper, the war veterans and Mugabe’s diplomatic war with the international community.

Before beginning all this, however, it might be useful to glean from all the chapters before the sort of wheat or chaff that Mugabe might be seen to be. When the land invasions reached their initial height, British newspapers headlined and editorialised that he was mad. He was demonised in such a way that access to a more nuanced view became difficult. Kinder treatments suggested that, finally, he was living up to type, and that type had been moulded in the intrigues and ruthlessness of the liberation struggle – not on the field of war itself – but in the palace coups, manoeuvres, back-stabbings and assassinations that, whether he was involved with them or not, inexorably took him to the leadership of ZANU. Even opposition discourse in Harare could not quite fathom the President.2 What, therefore, is the Mugabe who has, up to the period 1998–2002, emerged from this book?

1 Mugabe is himself not unintellectual.

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