Robert Mugabe

Reading a very interesting book on Robert Mugabe I was fascinated as I often am by the history. This is especially true when you have lived through part of that period and have been captivated by the events as they played out, literally in ones own back yard.  The implications for South Africa were crucial.
Rhodesia was a country which, when one visited it from South Africa with its Apartheid legacy, you were regaled  with what seemed a contented well run society black and white.     Coming from SA one took for granted the squewed, master servant relationship between the whites and the blacks, the Colonial legacy was intact and working well. We saw what seemed a genuinely good relationship between the races, and contrasted this with the friction in the contrived racially segregated society further south.
As the years passed we were surprised to see the unfurling of a bitter war breaking out between the whites under Ian Smith and the blacks under a range of men who's names became house hold words and events which were but milestones in the South African story. Nationalism and independence were breaking out all over the continent and eventually the pressure on South Africa to conform was overpowering.
Reading this book writen by a South African female author, Heidi Holland, I was struck, in hindsight how our view of the conflict and the reasons for the conflict were manipulated by the SA Government controlled media.
The good guys, Ian Smith and his white tribe, fighting for their very existence. The bad guys the terrorists were Marxist trained thugs who just happened to be black. The symmetry with what we were brain washed with, in South Africa made the story plausible.  Edgar Tekare, Sithole, Abel Muzorewa, Joshua Nkomo and of course, in the background, Mugaba himself.  
The quiet man, the man who from an isolated, matriarchal dominated childhood, which made him self sufficient but also withdrawn, lacking the normal communication skills with those around him. A clever man who obtained several degrees but has little empathy with others. An obsessive man who listens and trusts no one because of a deep rooted inferiority complex.
Painted into a corner he blames everyone but himself for the trauma brought down on the country he governs. This narcissistic behaviour has its routes in childhood but is amplified by the duplicity of those around him, especially of those in power in the  West with their racially based, stereo typical paternalism that made a mockery of his deep routed belief in the uniqueness of Africa and of African solutions.
Rather than compromise he became intransigent and brought to its knees a beautiful country !!