I don’t know what to make of Mugabe’s sacking of deputy

What you need to know:

  • In bringing Mrs Mujuru down, Mugabe resorted to the sort of cheap intrigues that were the calling cards of lesser men like Mobutu Sese Seko and Daniel arap Moi.
  • Mugabe has always been an austere, reserved kind of man. That was until the woman Zimbabweans call “Gucci Grace” on account of her extravagant spending came along.
  • Anybody who knows Zimbabwe will agree that Uncle Bob’s land redistribution programme is deeply appreciated by the peasantry, if not by the bankers and other upper crust professionals who live on deal-making.

For once, Robert Gabriel Mugabe has totally lost me. I don’t think it is senility. Even at 90 years, his mind is as sharp as a razor and his wit intact. The only visible deterioration brought by age is a tendency to flop into undignified naps during long meetings.

I don’t know what to make of the bizarre direction he has taken of late. He has always been a methodical, coldly rational kind of man. This week he fired his long-serving vice-president, Joyce Mujuru, and eight ministers close to her. It was done in a fit of petulance that has previously been alien to the man.

Mrs Mujuru was no ordinary VP. She and Mugabe have been lifelong comrades who had fought together in Zimbabwe’s liberation war.

In bringing Mrs Mujuru down, Mugabe resorted to the sort of cheap intrigues that were the calling cards of lesser men like Mobutu Sese Seko and Daniel arap Moi. The VP was accused, vaguely, of plotting to assassinate the president. She was supposed to have consulted witchdoctors and that Westerners — who as the world knows Mugabe hates with a passion — were supporting the plot. The whole thing sounded more melodramatic than a Nollywood movie.

What was even more surprising was the person Mugabe chose to bring Mrs Mujuru down: His own wife Grace Marufu. Grace is an interesting specimen. She is 49. Make that 41 years younger than her husband.

PERSONAL ATTACKS

In August, she launched a lurid campaign of very personal attacks against Mrs Mujuru, calling her “rotten witch” who “even dogs and flies” would not touch were she to die. Within no time, Mrs Mujuru has become history. Grace started off as a secretary to President Mugabe.

She then graduated to mistress when Mugabe’s sainted Ghanaian wife Sally was dying of kidney failure. By all accounts Mugabe was totally devoted to her. But she was childless. Grace patiently bid her time, in the meantime producing two children for the boss. Once Sally’s inevitable death happened, it didn’t take too long before Mugabe was dragged to the marital altar. I am not an expert on what happens to doddering old men who fall for the wiles of beautiful and much younger women. Mugabe has always been an austere, reserved kind of man. That was until the woman Zimbabweans call “Gucci Grace” on account of her extravagant spending came along.

I will be terribly startled if Mugabe’s endgame is to install Grace as his successor. President Grace Mugabe? Nah. For a man who is otherwise so smart and educated, we must wonder what he is up to. As of now, all bets are for the newly appointed VP, Emmerson Mnangagwa.

MUGABE'S DIFFICULT POLICIES

But why throw Mrs Mujuru so cruelly under the bus? My guess: She might have inadvertently sent signals of ending Zimbabwe’s isolation by making up with the West, and ditching some of Mugabe’s difficult policies if ever she came to power. Mugabe is an extremely proud man. That would amount to him as a betrayal. For now, forget the Western media pap of “Hitlerising” Mugabe.

That is all bull. Anybody who knows Zimbabwe will agree that Uncle Bob’s land redistribution programme is deeply appreciated by the peasantry, if not by the bankers and other upper crust professionals who live on deal-making.

The beef has always been the ruthless manner in which the policy was implemented, not the ultimate necessity of it. South Africa, where the ANC leaders like to sloganeer about revolution but are quickly settling into the burgeois lifestyles they once fought against, know and fear that Mugabe is a dangerous example to South Africa’s own dispossessed blacks. 

Guinea’s Sekou Toure or Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere are not on the African pantheon because they turned their countries into thriving Singapores. Unless he totally goes bananas, Mugabe belongs to this pantheon.