Mugabe was a dictator. There should be no debate about it

Last week, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s deposed ex-president, breathed his last. Mr Mugabe, known by his supporters and sycophants as Uncle Bob or Comrade Bob, has ignited in death the furious controversies that dogged him life. Is the man, once valorised as an African anti-imperialist icon, a villain or a hero?

GOSPEL TRUTH

Let me give it to you straight – if you are a believer in the gospel, rest assured Mr Mugabe will never see the gates of heaven. He’ll get a one-way ticket to hell to join Mobutu Sese Seko, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Augusto Pinochet, Winston Churchill, Francisco Franco, Muamar Gaddafi, Idi Amin, Ferdinand Marcos, Josef Stalin, and their ilk. He was a freedom fighter who ironically fought for, and against, freedom.

Nor will Mr Mugabe get a chance at redemption in purgatory. Purgatory is for those who’ve lived greyer lives in which the balance can tilt either way after they are laundered. You only get a chance to suffer in purgatory to explain your sins. There, you are said to be purified and cleansed so that you can ascend to heaven. But Mr. Mugabe was an unrepentant sinner – he killed, butchered, tortured, maimed, and detained countless innocents with impunity and without apology. There’s no grey in his life’s scorecard. In the end, he was overthrown by those who knew him best, and with whom he had committed his dirty deeds. But only because irate Zimbabweans finally had enough.

DESECRATING FLAGS

I’ve read with distress as African leaders outdid each other to say sweet nothings after Mr Mugabe’s demise. They are either hypocrites, or regard Mr Mugabe’s hapless victims as human garbage. A number of African states, including Kenya, flew their flags at half-staff to honour Mr Mugabe. That’s desecrating national flags and dancing on the graves of Mr Mugabe’s victims. But birds of a feather fly together. China and Russia, the other significant states to hail Mr Mugabe, aren’t paragons of virtue either. Both have never seen a dictator – African or any other – they didn’t love. Leaders who plunder our earth know how to circle wagons whenever one of their own is summoned to the afterlife.

Mr Mugabe was a betrayer of the revolution and an ogre bent on the consumption of humans. But I’ll give the devil his due – Mr Mugabe was an iconic freedom fighter and anti-colonialist. No one was happier than me when he took the helm of the country in 1980 after brutal and savage colonial rule by the British and white Rhodesians. But everything went south soon after liberation.

NDEBELE MASSACRE

Mr Mugabe plunged the country in a long nightmare of tyrannical rule and left it in a total shamble when he was kicked out two years ago. At the end, he left his people literally eating grass to survive. Meanwhile, his cronies looted the state and amassed obscene wealth.

Except for his freedom fighter credentials, the bulk of Mr Mugabe’s biography is written in the blood of his perceived opponents, most of whom simply sought to establish a democracy. Mr Mugabe’s legacy will be defined not by his fight against colonial and white minority rule, but by the massacres and killings of an estimated 20,000 fellow citizens between 1981-1985 in Matabeleland.

What started as a political conflict between Mr Mugabe and his rival Joshua Nkomo turned into one of the worst pogroms of the twentieth century. Under the tutelage of North Koreans, Mr Mugabe’s so-called Fifth Brigade carried out the Gukurahundi, a scorched earth campaign of torture, massive slaughters, and deliberate starvation. It was a Ndebele genocide.

EMPTY RHETORIC

The West winked at Mr Mugabe as he slaughtered his own people. British PM Margaret Thatcher remained silent for fear of provoking Mr Mugabe against white Zimbabweans. President Ronald Reagan was largely mute and even welcomed Mr Mugabe to the White House in 1983. That’s not all. Mr. Mugabe completely vapourised democracy and pulverised civil society. He violently stole elections and crushed the opposition. Opposition figures were routinely killed or savagely beaten and tortured. The independent press only existed only in the memories of those old enough to remember one. The economy collapsed and Zimbabwe became a factory for refugees, mostly to South Africa.

The nonagenarian – in his 90s – simply refused to exit the stage. Some defend his legacy and blame the West for Zimbabwe’s woes. It’s true the West squeezed his regime because of his so-called land reform programme that expropriated white-owned land and farms. But the programme failed because the land was given to his cronies. Finally, Mr Mugabe was left to rail at the West at AU and UN meetings with empty Pan-Africanist rhetoric.

Mr Mugabe’s epitaph will read as follows – “here lies a tragic freedom fighter, villain, murderer, torturer, betrayer of the revolution, fallen angel.”

Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School and Chair of KHRC. @makaumutua.