Mugabe’s biggest undoing is that he loves power too much
Former President Robert Mugabe and his wife Grace Mugabe during a past event.
What you need to know:
- She was sacked, vilified, accused of witchcraft and cast aside.
- He endured in prison in the 1960s and 1970s and has endured in power since 1980.
Robert Mugabe, the almost deposed President of Zimbabwe, is a stubborn old fool. And there is no fool like a stubborn old fool in love.
I have a feeling, if his wife Grace has been allowed to flee the country, the old fool will refuse to step down.
The only way he would agree to resign, I fear, is not if the military and the crocodiles held a gun to his head. It would be if they did so to his wife.
For Mr Mugabe seems to have fallen on a gnarled old knee and offered Zimbabwe to Grace as a testament to his love and devotion and to ensure that power does not leave his homestead.
POLITICAL ANTICS
At 93, one wonders whether his frail body and tired brain can cash the cheques that his eloquent mouth has been issuing to Grace.
It is doubtful at all if it is the wishes of Mr Mugabe that the affairs of the State were being determined.
The childish political antics that have been going on in Zimbabwe in recent years, the endless playing with fire, could not have been the issue of a formidable mind such as Mr Mugabe’s, at least not the Mugabe Africa knew in the 1980s and 1990s.
Did he and his wife expect that he would do to all their friends in the struggle what they did to former vice-president and icon of the revolution Joice Mujuru? Her husband, himself a military leader, died in very suspicious circumstances.
She was sacked, vilified, accused of witchcraft and cast aside. Mr Mugabe, quite apart from his reputation for being a buffoon who has broken Zimbabwe over the past 17 years, is a truly interesting specimen and a remarkable man.
PRISON
Many have written about his self-discipline and hard work. Others have noticed his charisma and eloquence. But there are two qualities which stand out.
First is his ruthlessness and capacity to endure. He endured in prison in the 1960s and 1970s and has endured in power since 1980.
Again, many people know about his violent suppression of the rebellion in Matebeleland when the army killed 10,000 civilians between 1982 and 1985.
Second and most remarkable is that Mr Mugabe was clever and loved learning when it was fashionable for African leaders to be stupid.
He graduated from the University of Fort Hare in 1951, but he went on to do another six degrees by correspondence — Bachelor of Arts in Administration and a Bachelor of Education from the University of South Africa, Bachelor of Laws and Master of Laws from the University of London, and two more law degrees while he was in prison. That is in addition to a Master of Science, which he earned while in power and God knows what else.
As African leaders go, he is a man of rare learning and intellect. Mr Mugabe didn’t go awfully bad because he was unqualified and unprepared for power.
It is because he loves power too much, to the extent that he seems to believe it should not be allowed to slip away beyond the door of his bedroom.
*****
I recognise and respect the right of Mr Peter Kaluma, the MP for Homa Bay Town, to seek secession from Kenya and the creation of another, or two, or three new countries, but I am puzzled by the formula that he used to pick the counties to join his new country.
Mr Kaluma’s wish list of counties for his new countries, includes all the counties of the African Republic of Kenya, except the Kikuyu counties of central Kenya, and three other counties of tribes from the Mt Kenya region.
How did Mr Kaluma select the counties to leave out? What is the qualification for membership to Mr Kaluma’s new country?
It cannot be political affiliation. Many of the counties that he has picked to be members of his new country do not support the National Super Alliance, the sponsor of this presumed secession project.
Is Mr Kaluma involved in tribalism, ethnic profiling and the creation of the reviled “other” — the bogeyman, the Igbo, the Jew, the “ni**er” — the racial, ethnic or national group, which is blamed, hated and condemned for all the ills of the world? Is this the re-emergence of 41 against one strategy that was employed by the Moist state to effectively profile and isolate the Kikuyu? Shouldn’t secession be about political beliefs rather than ethnicity, a matter upon which an individual has no control?
This is a bad political strategy because it could, in the fullness of time, explode into genocide.
If it does, I do hope that posterity will remember where it started.
Secondly, I disagree with Nasa leader Raila Odinga’s argument in America that the Kenya project has failed.
I think Kenyan politics and Kenyan politicians have failed. I think political parties have failed to win elections, others have failed to respect the law and be fair to their rivals.
It is also true that some powerful tenderpreneurs have failed to win tenders. Just as it is true that some over-rated members of the maggot elite have failed to get big jobs.
But that does not mean that the Kenya that Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and other nationalists fought and bled for, has failed.
