The trouble with obituaries is that their subjects never get to read them — well almost never.
There’s a famous case of the mayor of a small American town who was misreported as having died in a commuter aircraft crash but who, in fact, had missed the flight and decided to drive to his destination instead. A couple of local newspapers ran potted obituaries on him only to be surprised when the “dead” mayor pitched up their offices a few days later, attorney in tow, threatening to sue if they did not remove some of the unpleasant things that had been said about him.
But what of the generous things that are said about someone important enough to deserve a published obituary? Why shouldn’t a subject, before he’s hopped the perch, get a preview of what’s going to be said in a summing up of his life and achievements? In this spirit, here’s what will probably be written in tribute to the current president of Zimbabwe. I hope he gets to read and enjoy it.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe, who died while still maniacally clinging to Zimbabwean presidential power, was born in 1924. The son of a labourer, Mugabe had to see to his own education despite having therefore to study and absorb the language, arithmetic and aberrant table manners of the decadent English colonialists who many years before had stolen his people’s country from them. A few years later, Mugabe himself became a teacher and was forced to instill these appalling colonialist values into the unsullied minds of many young people under his tutelage.
After taking part in politics and the guerrilla war raging against the brutal white colonialist-funded minority regime in what was then Rhodesia, Mugabe came to power in 1980, first as prime minister and later as president of the renamed Zimbabwe.
Mugabe’s wholly understandable loathing for anything that had come to Africa from Europe was to underpin his thinking and actions in the seemingly endless years of his political career. He also despised anyone closer at hand and who displayed the unforgivable arrogance of disagreeing with him in any matter at all. His splendid impatience with debate was evidenced in the tactics of his trustworthy Fifth Brigade, a specially trained group of military psychopaths sent by Mugabe to Matabeleland to slaughter hundreds of thousands of Zimbabwean citizens who were threatening to refuse to vote for Mugabe. With this action Robert Gabriel thus joined the ranks of many other African leaders revered globally for their subtle manipulation of the continent’s realpolitik: political visionaries like Idi Amin Dada, Mobutu Sese-Seko, Charles Taylor, Sani Abacha, JG Strijdom are but a few among those hallowed names.
It was during the last years of his presidency that Mugabe’s gifts came to glorious fruition. Voted again and again into power, each election more shrewdly fraudulent than the last, Mugabe waited until he had reached his mid-70s before exposing the full and shattering brilliance of his leadership. Some say this late discharge of the Mugabe genius was a morbid affection following his marriage to Grace Marufu in 1996.
Forty years his junior, Grace is believed by many to have been the power behind the Mugabe throne, the extraordinary but unseen political tactician who guided Zimbabwe’s cataclysmic descent into ferocious ruin; its people in terror of a police and army grown genocidal with untrammeled power; its judicial system in the hands of appointed flunkies; its population starving; its health services destroyed; its state-controlled newspapers, radio and television spewing lies and distortions; its political opponents imprisoned and tortured; its fertile land rendered incapable of supporting its own population; its renowned wild-life massacred for food by famished people; its economy reduced to barrow-loads of worthless money; its shops empty of product; its political protest gatherings met with batons, quirts, live bullets and tear gas blasted from imported Israeli “security” vehicles; its women raped for sport by Mugabe’s “liberation veterans”; its main opposition leader arrested and charged with offences carrying the death penalty; its productive livestock, tobacco and agricultural farms seized and handed out to Mugabe’s relatives, to his military and police chiefs, his crony politicians.
In this paradise of democracy and to the very last day of his steadfast despotic rule, Robert Mugabe exhibited the triumph of his political faculties. His was a painstaking destruction of all Zimbabwean hope and future. In this onerous task Mugabe was blessed with the unquestioning loyalty and support of his Zanu-PF party members but not one of these displayed even a soupçon of the devotion and fidelity of purpose that Mugabe received from a neighbouring luminary, President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.
To Mbeki, Mugabe was the gibbering epitome of all that lay behind his own scintillating master plan, Nepad: the New Partnership for African Destruction. Mbeki missed no opportunity to be photographed or televised with his arm draped admiringly around the Mugabe shoulders.
More than any other factor, Robert Mugabe will stand in history as one of the proud pillars of Mbeki’s political vista. What greater compliment to a life ill spent than that?
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