IT smacks of a cheap jibe to describe Zimbabwe this week as a “banana republic”. But, however feeble a pun it might be on the name of Canaan Banana, the scandal which broke around the head of the former president further justifies that characterisation of our northern neighbour.
The story of the rape of Inspector Jefta Dube (accepted as true by a Zimbabwean judge) is nightmarish: a real life story which the most accomplished horror writers would have difficulty in emulating – a sort of Kafkaesque variation on Last Exit to Brooklyn.
However terrible the repeated rape of a helpless young police officer by a head of state, the real scandal for Zimbabwe is political. It lies in the failure of government officials to take early action against Banana, whose coercive sexuality was seemingly known at a high level of government from the early 1980s. In a very real sense these officials carry responsibility not only for the rape of Dube – and, seemingly, of other young victims procured from the police force – but also for the inspector’s murder of the constable who taunted him as “Banana’s wife”.
Our correspondent in Harare details on PAGE 14 those who were in the know: the deputy police commissioner, to whom Dube first complained; the commissioner of police, to whom he repeated his story; the speaker of Parliament, during a stint as acting president; the deputy prime minister, standing in for Robert Mugabe as premier …
There is no direct evidence that Mugabe himself was in the know, although it is difficult to imagine he was ignorant of what was clearly an open secret in senior political circles.
But even if he was ignorant of the rapes he, too, carries a heavy burden of blame – because the tale of Dube and Banana is fundamentally a story of the corruption of power; of a government so steeped in authoritarianism that political seniority provided an effective shield for criminal perversity.
And the wellspring of that authoritarianism is inescapably Mugabe, whether driving motorists off the road with the shrieking sirens (and, on occasion, blazing guns) of the presidential motorcade, or covering up the atrocities of Matabeleland. Or commandeering flights of the national airline for jaunts to the capitals of Europe. Or tolerating abuses of the state tender system. Or indulging in personal profligacy – the three-day wedding binge for 20 000 guests and the 30-bedroom Gracelands being built for his young bride – in contemptuous disregard of public perceptions. Or …
Mugabe likes to be seen as one of the continent’s elder statesmen. In that role he was a guest of South Africa just last week, lending his “wisdom” to a search for peace in the Great Lakes crisis. With Dube in mind, it is time he was told Africa can do without his leadership.