Iden Wetherell
He is being compared to Britain’s combative wartime leader Winston Churchill in local media tributes which border on the hagiographical. But whether this proves to be President Robert Mugabe’s finest hour ultimately depends on the outcome of the war he is busy directing in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In a decision that has sharply divided public opinion at home and caused a major rift with his neighbours, Mugabe last week began dispatching Zimbabwe’s armed forces to support the besieged regime of Laurent Kabila.
While the Churchillian evocation is probably fanciful, the career of an earlier revolutionary commander who crowned himself emperor may be nearer the mark. For although evidently prepared to fight wherever the opportunity presents itself, Mugabe’s characteristic belligerence could this time lead him to his Waterloo.
The Napoleonic delusions of Zimbabwe’s 74-year-old president were on display last week as he lashed out at fellow Southern African Development Community (SADC) heads of state who he obviously felt were attempting to rein-in his boundless ambition.
“No SADC country is compelled to help,” he asserted with regard to his decision to prop up Kabila’s crumbling regime. “But those who don’t want to help should keep quiet about those who want to do so.”
The rebuke to South Africa’s President Nelson Mandela was anything but oblique. Mugabe resents what he sees as Mandela’s intrusion upon his regional patch.
As head of the Frontline States in the years before the emergence of a democratic South Africa, Mugabe was Southern Africa’s leading statesman, accustomed to laying down the law. And as chair of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defence and Security he has been able to play a residual role which bolsters his waning prestige at home and projects his stature abroad.
Born in Zvimba, north of Harare, on February 21 1924, Robert Gabriel Mugabe was educated by Jesuit priests at Kutama Mission.
As a teacher in the 1950s he was drawn to the growing nationalist movement and after a spell in Ghana became a founder of the Zimbabwean African National Union (Zanu) in 1963.
Detained by the white minority government in the mid-1960s, he emerged in 1974 as the undisputed party leader, demonstrating a quick grasp and an unmatched fluency on the rostrum.
His Zanu party became the dominant partner in the Patriotic Front alliance which brought independence to Zimbabwe in 1980.
In old age, however, his style has become hectoring while his mastery of issues has been replaced by an iron grip on policy. Once an avowed Marxist he is now a devout Marist finding comfort in the theological certainties of his Catholic youth.
In the 1980s Zimbabwe’s British brokered Constitution was repeatedly amended to concentrate power in the president’s hands and facilitate a one-party state.
But recently his authority has been challenged by a growing democratic movement in Zimbabwe only too eager to expose his policy failures and by other leaders in the region more committed to political pluralism and economic reform.
More than anything else Mugabe has felt overshadowed by the new South Africa, adhering to notions of constitutional governance utterly alien to his authoritarian mindset and muscling in on areas hitherto regarded as falling exclusively within his domain.
An early sign of his growing irritation was evident at the 1995 Harare Book Fair where his attack on homosexuality carried a significant sub-text.
By slapping down Zimbabwe’s emergent civil society, Mugabe was in effect attempting to re-establish his claim to be the region’s authentic African voice.
“Look what rainbow nations produce,” was the unstated warning. “Look what happens when the party and government lose control of society.”
Similarly, in his epic struggle with Zimbabwe’s white farmers, Mugabe has positioned himself as the agent of revolutionary redistribution. But despite the endless torrent of fiery invective, his refusal to implement a transparent and effective land reform programme has seen rural frustrations mount.
Meanwhile, all attempts by donors and the farmers themselves to provide land and funding for peasant resettlement have come up against the immovable object of Mugabe’s ego.
Those within his own Zanu PF party who have dared to suggest his tenure of office should be limited to two terms have been denounced as witches and stripped of their rank.
Trade union leaders mobilising their supporters to resist predatory tax imposts which they see as the cost of economic mismanagement have been accused of the ultimate offence in Mugabe’s Bonapartist state – having political ambitions.
“We have many degrees in violence,” Mugabe warned when the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions threatened to take to the streets.
After 18 years of untramelled power, Mugabe now sees his enemies as mobilising on every front – Western donors seeking to undo his redistributive social order, allied to white farmers and Rhodesian ultras awaiting their opportunity to restore the ancient regime.
Add to this conspiracy an assertive South Africa promoting such alien concepts as human rights and political dialogue in the region and one can better understand Mugabe’s empathy with Kabila.
This week he appointed Air Marshal Perence Shiri, the man who presided over the pacification of Matabeleland in the 1980s, to command Zimbabwean, Angolan and Congolese forces fighting the rebels. The Congo crisis has thus provided a defining moment for Zimbabwe’s pugnacious head of state.
Here is an opportunity to isolate South Africa and its meddling president. Zimbabwe will by its military intervention in the Congo at one stroke establish Central Africa as a Zimbabwean sphere of influence, support a fellow dictator who knows how to put civil society in its place, and thwart South African attempts to wrest control of the SADC security organ from Harare.
It is a bold plan. But as the cost of Mugabe’s war begins to impinge upon an already depleted exchequer and the first bodybags are brought home, his judgment is more than ever being called into question. There is everywhere a palpable disenchantment with a decision that is seen as arbitrary and probably designed to distract attention from more pressing issues at home.
Unless he can quickly impose on the Congolese the sort of obedience he has been accustomed to at home, Mugabe’s Congo adventure could turn out to be his last. In which case St Helena beckons.
Vital Statistics
Born: 1924 in Zvimba, north of Harare
Title: “His Excellency the Authentic and Consistent Leader, President and First Secretary”
Most likely to say: “Go to hell.”
Favourite word: “Lies!” – particularly when reading the independent press.
Least likely to say: “Let’s talk this over.”