Imprisoned by the liberator

Most elections in poor countries are preceded by a generous doling out of freebies. Not in Zimbabwe, though, which is facing a presidential election run-off on June 27...

Most elections in poor countries are preceded by a generous doling out of freebies. Not in Zimbabwe, though, which is facing a presidential election run-off on June 27, and where the incumbent Robert Mugabe has just recently cut off all food aid — mostly international — to his largely starving people. But then Zimbabwe isn’t a normal democracy at all. Mugabe, the liberation hero turned tyrant, has been using every method at his disposal — torture, murder, rigging and suppression — to shut out his opposition. Still, he came out behind his main rival Morgan Tsvangirai in the first round. However, he managed to bulldoze a dithering election commission into declaring Tsvangirai marginally short of the 50 per cent of the vote needed to secure an outright victory. In any other democracy, the opposition should have won hands down.

And here is why. Zimbabwe is arguably one of the worst places on the planet to be a resident. The rate of inflation is 160,000 per cent. Unemployment is around 80 per cent, which makes one in five Zimbabweans unemployed. Absolute poverty afflicts more than 2 in 3 people. GDP ‘growth’ was minus 6 per cent in 2007. Unusually, it is also one of the few countries in the world, which is worse off now than it was fifteen years ago. Life expectancy in 2007 is 39 compared with around 60 in 1990.

As unbelievable as it sounds now, Zimbabwe was a role model for the rest of Africa in the early 1990s — a functioning democracy following liberal free market policies. How did things reach here?

Story continues below this ad

The real free fall for Zimbabwe began in 2000, with the shoddy implementation of a controversial land reform programme. Mugabe and his allies, at the time, argued that 70 per cent of the land in Zimbabwe was owned by the Whites who constituted less than 1 per cent of the population, a gross inequality which certainly needed correction. But the violent manner in which White farm owners were ejected and the land handed over to cronies left many observers deeply disappointed with the leadership of the one time liberation hero, Robert Mugabe. What made things worse was the inability of the new owners to till the land productively, which led to a collapse of Zimbabwe’s agriculture based economy. Along with agriculture, tourism, the other bedrock of the economy also collapsed.

It is perhaps one of the great ironies of many parts of post-colonial Africa that the Black elites have ruthlessly crushed the masses, while looting their country’s wealth, perhaps as much as the White colonials did at an earlier time. The international community, particularly countries like India, which were at the forefront of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa have chosen to remain silent over the plight of Zimbabwe’s millions. The US and the EU have little influence, with the latter burdened by its own imperialist past. South Africa, led by Thabo Mbeki is perhaps the greatest culprit in allowing Mugabe to prosper. It seems it is easier for everyone to criticise a racist regime (pre-1980 Zimbabwe and Pre-1992 South Africa), which brutalises its people, than a non-racist regime, which does pretty much the same.

The only other beacon of hope now, ironic as it sounds, is Robert Mugabe himself. He would do well to remember that history is almost always harsh on tyrants. And invariably it is kind on liberators. Robert Mugabe has been a bit of both. And at 84, staring down the barrel of electoral rejection, he ought to be looking at his rear view mirror, as he heads into oblivion, first political and then as it is inevitable, mortal. This is his last chance at influencing, in his favour, those who will write the history of his nation, a nation, which he once liberated, and then suffocated. One hopes for his sake, and indeed Zimbabwe’s, that he chooses the path of wisdom and liberates his nation from himself.

dhiraj.nayyar@expressindia.com