He was an item in my thinking during my time spent in South Africa, he was one of the players during the years of Apartheid on the periphery of the country, an example of the nationalism that was sweeping the continent.
The colonial powers the Brits, the Portuguese, the French and the Germans were scrambling to get out and leave the Africans to their lot. The reasoning was that they owned the chance to run their own affairs and like the Brexiters, the end was more important than the means.
It's a deep held supposition that a nation state should be run by at least a faction of the majority of the people living there, irrespective of any shaky resolve of the people to carry it off and Robert Mugabe was an example of such a person, one who had dedicated his life to wresting control from the European by any and every means possible.
Nelson Mandela, Kenneth Kaunda, Jomo Kenyatta, Hastings Banda all names to ponder as we hunkered down in South Africa, denounced by much of the world for opposing the tide of nationalism.
Mugabe came in by the back door so to speak with the British keen to appease public opinion world wide and seek a smooth transition from white rule in Rhodesia, led by Ian Smith and had earmarked the Reverend Abel Muzorewa as a safe pair of hands to oversee the transition. At the last moment Mugabe outflanked the British, who capitulated at the Lancaster House talks and claimed leadership himself. It was the beginning of a career in political chicanery, a career of political thuggery, of despotism and tribal humiliation in Matabele land where the second largest tribe in Zimbabwe, the Ndebele, led by Joshua Nkomo, were slaughtered by a specially trained government force, the Fifth Brigade, troops made up from North Korea
Massacres and the brutal ousting of the white farmers were his stock in trade but he is still remembered by his brothers in arms as a leading African Nationalist who's detestation of white rule overrode any semblance of contrition.
Living there in South Africa, coming with the prejudgment of European ideas of democracy made the African case for independence unarguable and the warnings of people who had tilled the land and forged the industries in the city's in SA were not given sufficient notice. The ideal of one man one vote was all that counted and so as colonial lands toppled to the call to nationalism, the essential driving force in the land gave way to a tribal hegemony with a different kind of 'force majeure' being imposed.
Mugabe was a tyrant but because he was black and one of a band of "freedom fighters" a description to conjure the righting of wrongs, he will be fated in many capitals in Africa and we should take note that to seek absolution one must first decide if a crime has been committed and whether the ends deserve the means.
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