Robert Mugabe is gone. The man the news media called “the world’s longest serving dictator” resigned this week, thus heading off both impeachment and forcible removal from office by Zimbabwe’s army.
My first thought: “How the mighty are fallen.” The quotation seems oddly apt. The legendary Hebrew King David uttered those words as a lament for the death of a man who had once been his closest friend, and then became his adversary.
King David and Robert Mugabe have more in common than you might think.
Both started as rebels. Today they’d be called traitors, or terrorists. Both started with enormous promise. Both initially led their nations to success. Both had extra-marital affairs with a younger woman.
And both overstayed their welcome. Both ended up weak, feeble, incompetent. In one of his final public appearances, 93-year-old Mugabe needed help finding the right page in his speech.
From outlaws to leaders
It’s worth remembering that all leaders of the new independent nations of South and Central Africa were once considered terrorists. Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya headed the notorious Mau Mau. Samora Machel led the Frelimo in a 10-year war against Portugal in Mozambique. Namibia attained independence only after a 23-year war; Angola, after 25 years.
Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi were both jailed for terrorist activites, although neither actually led armed insurrection. As everyone knows, Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in a South African prison.
Mugabe earned his stripes in this elite with eight years in prison.
Some emerging African leaders were, uncharitably, thugs. By contrast, Mugabe came to power as a bright shining hope. He was well educated. He had seven – yes, seven! – legitimately earned university degrees. He understood politics, administration, and economics.
The bloom fades
For a while, he seemed to be fulfilling that promise. Rhodesia, formerly Southern Rhodesia, had been Britain’s most prosperous African colony. After Mugabe took over as prime minister in 1980, the new nation of Zimbabwe continued to prosper.
For a while.
Over the next 20 years, the number of secondary schools increased ten times, from 177 to 1548, Literacy rose to 82 per cent. Childhood immunization reached 92 per cent.
But in the 1990s, the economy began crashing. Some blame the International Monetary Fund’s austerity policies. Some blame Mugabe’s own repressive rule. When a delegation of Roman Catholic priests documented lists of military atrocities, Mugabe dismissed their allegations as unpatriotic falsehoods.
By 2000, life expectancies, wages, and employment had all fallen lower than when Mugabe took over. Unemployment surpassed 50 per cent. The country’s GDP shrank to half its former levels. Zimbabwe set world records for inflation, reaching an unimaginable 100,000 per cent per year by 2009. Three quarters of the population relied on food aid.
Violence flared. White citizens lived in fear. White farms were torched, cattle killed, businesses vandalized. About four million, white and black, fled the country.
Harsh examples
In Botswana, I talked with a woman too young to remember Zimbabwe before Mugabe. “We dared not drive with open car windows,” she said. “If garbage wasn’t thrown in, they’d reach in and grab us.”
She said they lived in gated communities, behind walls topped with razor wire. “We never opened the gates if there was a car behind us,” she told me. “The robbers would ram through before the gates could close.”
Was she prejudiced? Probably. Was she being honest? Probably.
One incident encapsulates, for me, Zimbabwe’s long downhill slide. After a scheduling foul-up, our flight landed at the Victoria Falls International Airport in Zimbabwe.
Every other airport had computers. Zimbabwe still used carbon paper.
The first line inched forward to pick up visa application forms. We filled out the forms. Took them into a second line. Where an immigration officer sitting next to the first officer examined the pages, took our money, wrote out individual receipts by hand, copied our data by hand onto a certificate which he inserted into our passports, and stamped each piece of paper. Twice. With rubber stamps. We moved to a third line, where a third officer, sitting beside to the other two, diligently checked our receipts, stamped our papers once more, and waved us through.
The process took over two hours.
I know it’s not fair to judge an entire country by a single example of bureaucratic inefficiency – even if it was at the entry point for Zimbabwe’s biggest tourist destination. But that incident sticks in my mind as a metaphor for 37 years of Robert Mugabe’s rule.
Mugabe is now relegated to Zimbabwe’s past. May its future be brighter.
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Copyright © 2017 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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YOUR TURN
Last week I wrote about fanaticism.
Robert Caughell particularly liked the line, “"The fanatic’s mind is closed, locked, barricaded against its enemy. No other views are permissible. Or even possible".
He added, “During the last US election Trump followers believed everything said about Hillary Clinton as true even if proven false, like the child porn ring being run out of a day care.”
Cliff Boldt wrote, fanaticism “is precisely what I fear for North America. Trumpism will cross the border in a heartbeat if the conditions here are the same as there. When you have all the social stresses and tensions arising from issues like income and housing insecurity and inequality, the gas is being poured on the floor, awaiting a spark. Canadians unwilling or unable to look at the causes will be the ones leading the vigilante charges.”
George Brigham supplemented with a British perspective: “I’ve not heard or seen anything about cow vigilantes in the UK media but, by coincidence, there was an item BBC radio this morning about Hindu vegans trying to persuade other British Hindus to stop using cow milk and other dairy products in temple worship and to use vegetable-based substitutes. This is not, apparently, in an effort to make all Hindus vegan. Rather it is because of the exploitation (in their understanding) of bovine animals in dairy farming.”
Steve Roney thought I had been unfair, twice. First, in criticizing the media for not reporting anything about “cow vigilantes.” Steve wrote, “The media here are simply giving their audience what they want. Everyone is naturally more interested in what happened next door than in what happened on the other side of the world. That's why we have local newspapers and local newscasts; people would not be nearly as keen to follow the local newscast of some other random city instead.
“In the same way, you suggest a moral equivalence between persecution of Muslims in India and of Hindus in Pakistan. But there is a crucial difference. In India, the problem is with vigilantes, and the government tries to stop them. In Pakistan, the problem is a government that harshly enforces blasphemy laws against non-Muslims. And reputedly does little against the vigilantes.”
Last week’s column, in general, made Margaret Tribe think of a public meeting with the Dalai Lama: “At the end of his talk someone from the audience asked the Dalai Lama, ‘Why didn't you fight back against the Chinese?’ The Dalai Lama looked down, swung his feet just a bit, then looked back up at us and said with a gentle smile, ‘Well, war is obsolete, you know.’ Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he said, ‘Of course the mind can rationalize fighting back ... but the heart, the heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you.”
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols.
Ralph Milton ’s latest project is called “Sing Hallelujah” -- the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at wwwDOTsinghallelujahDOTca
Ralph’s HymnSight webpage is still up, http://wwwDOThymnsightDOTca, with a vast gallery of photos you can use to enhance the appearance of the visual images you project for liturgical use (prayers, responses, hymn verses, etc.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca>
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom
Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town -- not particularly religious, but fun; alvawoodATgmailDOTcom to get onto her mailing list.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom or twatsonATsentexDOTnet