Robert Mugabe ensured that Zimbabwe’s runoff election, scheduled
for today, would have only himself as presidential candidate by
driving the opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
from the scene. All it took was his Zanu-PF goons killing and
maiming the principal members of the MDC. Mugabe, the despot,
continues to tyrannize this economically destitute, politically
shackled state.
The Secretary General of the MDC had been jailed earlier in the
month under a death sentence for treason. Morgan Tsvangirai, MDC
presidential candidate, fled this week to the Dutch embassy to
escape the carnage on the streets and then announced his party was
opting out of the runoff. This was after the wife of the MDC mayor
of the capital city of Harare was kidnapped and butchered in front
of her 4-year-old son.
In response the United Nations, guided by the purposeful
inaction of its African members, has held indignant meetings on the
subject of holding more indignant meetings.
What needs to be done is clear, though it is never mentioned
except in whispers. Military forces aided by internal resistance
must be used to oust the dictator and install a democratically
elected government. Sound familiar? Unfortunately Zimbabwe’s
neighbors do not want to launch such an effort and certainly do not
countenance non-African powers doing so.
What they apparently want is to see peace and democracy
magically break out. It’s not going to happen. What exists instead
is a concerted effort by African leaders and the world’s many
left-wing apologists to construct reason and logic out of Mugabe’s
societal and political mayhem. This obfuscation and obscurantism
reaches back many years.
ROBERT MUGABE ONCE MAY have been quiet and cunningly smart, but he
always had the murderous capability he now so obviously wields.
Europeans (the African term for all whites), eager to find
intelligent African leaders within whom they might see the
qualities the French used to refer to as evolvue
(evolved), perceived in the admitted leftist Mugabe a man
nonetheless of apparent common sense and contemporary
sophistication.
From the beginning Mugabe set about to politically and then
physically annihilate others who had worked for Zimbabwe
independence. His Central Intelligence Organization was formed from
the ranks of those personally most loyal. They have kept an eye on
everything and everyone in the country that might pose a threat to
their leader. This has included the members of his own party.
All law enforcement follows the same line, as does the
hand-picked Presidential Guard. The Army’s Fifth Brigade originally
had North Korean advisors to ensure proper training with old Soviet
equipment — and to rub their presence under the noses of the
former British “imperialists.” To further strengthen his hold on
power Mugabe has created units of so-called “war veterans” who do
the dirty street bullying to keep villagers in line and coerce the
few remaining white farmers.
Robert Mugabe in all his fearful paranoia is protected by this
large and formidable internal security apparat. Their existence
depends on “the old man,” and they know it. African leaders, while
acknowledging the danger to his own country that Mugabe poses,
point to his advanced age (84) as the key to dealing with him.
Africa is waiting for him to die, but he just doesn’t seem to be in
an accommodating mood.
ROBERT MUGABE HASN’T CHANGED and doesn’t appear to intend to. He’s
the same as he was earlier, just more practiced in his paranoia and
deadly in his despotism. He never was a democrat. He never sought
democracy for his country. And he has never understood anything
about governance other than the heavy-handed manipulation of the
political process.
This aged but not infirm Mugabe is deeply insulted at what he
views is an ungrateful public that has spawned from its ranks
legions of non-subservient disbelievers. In his eyes, these “tools
of British imperialism” seek to overturn history. Robert Mugabe has
reached the same point in his life as did Felix Houphoet-Boigny,
Joseph Desire Mobuto, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, and other African
autocrats to whom power was their raison d’etre.
Perhaps the African and United Nations solution is right. Wait
for the old man to die. But then what? When tyrannies fall, they
can leave chaos in their wake. The existing large and demanding
security force will remain desirous of protecting their power. They
must be disbanded and removed from influence.
Are Southern Africa and the United Nations prepared to accept
the responsibility that awaits them? Will they really care more
then than they do now?
