President Robert Mugabe, one of Africa’s most combative and enduring rulers, shows no sign of mellowing with age as he turns 80 on Saturday.
In the days before his birthday, Mugabe spoke mainly of war — war against the alleged efforts of Britain and the United States to topple his regime, and war against ”economic saboteurs” at home.
Mugabe’s fighting talk was accompanied by deepening state repression. Last week, he signed a presidential decree authorising detention without bail for up to four weeks for political and economic offences.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change described the decree — the latest in a growing arsenal of repressive laws — as an undeclared state of emergency.
A slight, fidgety man, whose hands are never still, Mugabe is sub-Saharan Africa’s fourth-longest ruling president after Togo’s Gnassingbe Eyadema, Gabon’s Omar Bongo and Angola’s Eduardo dos Santos.
Hailed in the 1980s as one of the continent’s great statesmen for his attempts to reconcile blacks and whites after more than a decade of fighting, he has since been condemned as a tyrant for rekindling racial hatreds and sacrificing his country’s economy in a bid to cling to power.
Mugabe led black guerrillas in the campaign against the white-minority Rhodesian government, but sought to allay the fears of the country’s tiny white minority when he became Zimbabwe’s first black leader after independence from Britain in 1980.
Many whites, who had been told by their leaders that Mugabe planned to rape their women and shoot their men, decided to stay after he promised that ”there is a place for you in the sun”.
With the help of their commercial farms, Zimbabwe prospered and developed into a regional breadbasket. Mugabe worked to bolster the nation’s health and education systems, making them among the best in Africa.
But the economy soured amid Zimbabwe’s costly involvement in The Democratic Republic of Congo’s five-year war and revelations of corruption. After voters rejected a constitutional referendum in 2000 that would have consolidated Mugabe’s powers, ruling party officials accused white commercial farmers of bankrolling his opponents in the Movement for Democratic Change.
Mugabe ordered the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks, touching off more than three years of political violence that has claimed the lives of more than 200 people and hounded tens of thousands of mostly black opposition supporters from their homes.
The land seizures, coupled with erratic rains, have crippled the country’s agriculture-based economy. Zimbabwe faces record inflation and unemployment, along with acute shortages of food, hard currency, gasoline and other imports.
Mugabe has repeatedly dismissed rumors that his health is failing and calls from within his own party to retire.
”The president is as fit as none of his detractors can ever hope to be in their lifetime,” his spokesperson, George Charamba, said recently.
Mugabe was narrowly re-elected in 2002 in an election that independent observers said was marred by intimidation and vote rigging. He has since stepped up a crackdown against dissent, arresting opposition leaders and waging lengthy legal battles to shut down the country’s only independent newspaper.
Political analysts say he is unlikely to leave office until he has secured another victory in next year’s parliamentary vote and presidential elections in 2008, possibly for a successor of his choice.
In a bid to clean up his Zanu-PF party before the elections, Mugabe has announced a new drive to fight top-level corruption. Two senior ruling party officials were arrested earlier this year.
Analysts, however, dismiss the move as political cunning.
”It is all being stage-managed. He is not going to touch the really big guys, but punish only the ones he can afford to sacrifice,” said John Makumbe, a political scientist at the University of Zimbabwe.
The two arrested officials had flaunted lavish lifestyles, buying mansions and expensive cars, as more than 70% of the population languished below the poverty line.
But Mugabe’s closest and most powerful colleagues have been among the biggest beneficiaries of official graft, Makumbe said.
The party’s Chinhoyi provincial chairman, Philip Chiyangwa, boasted in the fashion pages of the state Herald newspaper that he owned 500 suits, 800 pairs of shoes and thousands of silk ties — all color-coordinated in a computerised wardrobe.
The anti-corruption drive has scared some companies and corporate executives into renewing their allegiance to the ruling party — with several making large contributions to Zanu-PF coffers. – Sapa-AP