According
to Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa, it is strange that men would fight and kill to
grab power, kill and dehumanise others to stay in power, strain by all
means to force their will on their people and then be forced to resign,
retire, be dethroned, kill themselves or get killed in disgrace.
When News Breaks Out, We Break In. (The 2014 Bloggies Finalist)
Robert Mugabe
Tuesday night, November 14, 2017, the last chapter in the long
history of Robert Mugabe in the Zimbabwean public space was opened. He
was brought under house arrest by the military as a first step to his
forced departure from office.
Born 93 years ago on February 21, 1924, Mugabe became President of
Zimbabwe in 1987 and remained in power willy-nilly for 30 full years.
Before then he had been Prime Minister for seven years( 1980-87),
following the Lancaster House agreement that brought Ian Smith’s White
minority rule to an end. Before that he was the Chairman of the Zimbabwe
African National Union, ZANU, for five years( 1975-1980).
Robert Gabriel Mugabe started his political odyssey as a
Marxist-Leninist in the ’70s, was imprisoned for sedition ( 1964-74),
before becoming a revolutionary leading the Rhodesian Bush War and
turned a socialist in the ’90’s. After changing the name of his party to
ZANU-PF( Patriotic Front), he crushed Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African
Peoples Union( ZAPU).
Using his 5th brigade which reportedly killed over 10,000
civilians, especially the Ndebele people, he quickly transited from a
revolutionary to a dictator. He encouraged the violent seizure of
White-owned land. Food production was severely impacted, generating
famine, international sanctions and unprecedented economic decline.
He refused to hand over power to any other and got re-elected in
2002, 2008 and 2013 through electoral campaigns dominated by violence
and electoral fraud and was planning to run again in 2018 at age 94.
Having dominated Zimbabwean politics for nearly four decades, Mugabe had
become a controversial and divisive figure.
He was previously praised as a revolutionary hero of the African
liberation struggle who helped to free Zimbabwe from British
colonialism, imperialism and White minority rule. But then he turned a
dictator responsible for economic mismanagement, wide spread corruption,
anti-White racial discrimination, human rights abuses, suppression of
political critics and crime against humanity.
It is regrettable that many men who start as revolutionaries end up
as dictators and finally resign, retire,are removed or die in disgrace.
History is replete with these men who played god, who forced their
wishes on their people and imprisoned or killed those who resisted.
According to Wikipedia, a dictator is a political leader who possesses
absolute power and wields it in an oppressive and abusive manner.
History has thrown up men who seized power to make laws, suspend
elections, proclaim state of emergency and repress political opponents
without following due process. Some of these men were former liberators
who have turned into egocentric sociopaths; others are democratically
elected demagogues who are now in disarray, but most were or are
outright usurpers of political power through military might, hereditary
militancy or hijacked revolution.
According to Plaid Avenger, while these despots come from from
diverse backgrounds of debauchery, they all share a core common callous
characteristic which put them into the cross-hairs of high- powered
rifle of history.
These tyrants suppress freedom of speech and religion, destroy all
political opposition, crush or control the press and grab as much of the
national resources of the state as they can grab for themselves and
their families.Such men include Adolf Hitler( 1889-1945), Josef Stalin (
1928-1913), Pol Pot( 1925-1998), Idi Amin( 1925-2003), Augustino
Pinochet ( 1915- 2006), Francois Duvelair( 1907- 1971), Francisco
Franco( 1892-1925), Saddam Hussien( 1937-2006), Charles Taylor( 1948-),
Mengistu Haile Marian( 1937-). Also included on this despicable list of
tyrants are Benito Mussolini of Italy, Vladimir Lenin of Russia, Emperor
Hirohito of Japan, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev of Russia, Chiang Kai Shek of
China, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam. Yakubu
Gowon, Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha of Nigeria also feature on this
list.
These men and others too numerous to mention in this space are held
responsible ( directly or indirectly) for millions of lives lost and
crushing the human spirit out of hundreds of millions more.
Most maintained their self righteous positions by brutal
repression, the use of torture and systematically dis-empowering the
peoples of their nations by keeping them impoverished, illiterate or
misinformed via the manipulation of the press.
The greatest irony is that some of the deadliest of these despots
who became self-absorbed, self-assured, above the law and power hungry
first came to power through democratic elections.
Most notable among those who rose on this democratic platform are
Muamar Ghadaffi ( Libya), Kin Jim Il ( Korea), Than Shwe( Burma), Hosni
Mubarak( Egypt), Teodoro Obiang( Equatorial Guinea), Omar-al Bashir(
Sudan), Ayatollah Khamenei( Iran), Alexander Lukastenko( Belarus),
Abdulaziz Bouteflika( Algeria), Ali Abdullah Saleh( Yemen), Silver
Berlusconi( Italy) and our man of the moment- Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe
who rose to power through electoral deception and fear mongering. He
allegedly killed more than 20,000 civilians by fabricating stories of
rebellion and treason.
It is estimated that through his time in office, over 3.1million
Zimbabweans either lost their lives or jobs and livelihood due to his
”land reform program” where he bulldozed any village that voiced
dissent.
With death starring him on the face and afraid to end up at the
International Court of Justice, ICC, in the Haque, Mugabe began to
prepare his wife ‘Gucci Grace’ to succeed him and would broach no
opposition or competition.
Having previously neutralised the opposition posed by his former
ally Morgan Tsvangirai , whom he ran out of town, he followed the same
route most recently. He unilaterally sacked his Vice President and then
potential successor- Emmerson Mnangagwa ( now true successor) and that
opened the last chapter on Mugabe and his stranglehold over Zimbabwe
allowing him to go the same way all dictators exit- by disgrace.
It is strange that men would fight and kill to grab power, kill and
dehumanise others to stay in power, strain by all means to force their
will on their people and then be forced to resign, retire, be dethroned,
kill themselves or get killed in disgrace. Can the remnants of this
tribe still in power- 21 in Africa, 18 in Asia, seven in the Middle East
, one in Europe and two in the Americas learn any lessons?
I pray that Assad of Syria, Erdogan of Turkey, Maduro of Venezuela,
Duterte of Phillipines, Musoveni of Uganda, Mbasogo of Equatorial
Guinea, Lukashenko of Belarus, Nkurunziza of Burundi, Biya of Cameroun,
Derby of Chad, Bongo of Gabon, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Kim Jong-un
of North Korea, etc., who are trappling on their people, playing god and
manipulating their constitutions to remain in power perpetually are
listening? I just pray.
***
Written by Mazi Sam Ohuabunwa
When News Breaks Out, We Break In. (The 2014 Bloggies Finalist)
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