Rhosarian 2019

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The Rhosarian 1/19 The FLAG THE FLAG October 2019 41 Flame Lily Abridged Gazette No. 5/19 Zimbabwe Profile 2019 The FLAG comprises extracts from media articles and reports on Zimbabwe. Sources are given, where known, so that readers may obtain the complete article if they wish. THE FALLACY OF THE HERO-TURNED-VILLAIN By Siphosami Malunga Posted on Saturday, 7 September 2019 The fallacy of the hero-turned-villain narrative of Robert Mugabe is the greatest trick this devil ever played. The closest I have to feeling anything is quiet, seething rage. Rage that this man who killed thousands and destroyed so many livelihoods has died without facing justice for his atrocities. I am not religious but want now more than anything to hang tightly to the promise of purgatory – the halfway house and hell’s holding cell. He escaped justice in this life, I pray it is waiting for him in the next. I hope he is “under arrest” right now and will be denied bail just as he arrested and denied the thousands he persecuted in his four decades in power. Many say they are conflicted about Mugabe –
The Rhosarian 1/19 42 whom they call a pan Africanist, father of the Zimbabwean nation and a hero turned villain. I personally do not suffer from this conflict. Liberation hero? Credited by some for his gallant role in leading Zanu in the last very short leg of the liberation struggle from 1975 to 1979 – only four years – he gets far more credit than he deserves. The gallantry and heroism, according to his closest comrades, is manufactured. His recruiter into the liberation struggle and companion on the surreptitious journey to Mozambique, Edgar Tekere former secretary general of Zanu PF, spoke in his book, of a reluctant, scared and unwilling participant of the struggle into which he was foisted because, with his multiple academic degrees, he spoke and wrote well compared to the other guerillas. Much like his cousin and nationalist James Chikerema who spoke of the narcissistic and selfabsorbed young bookish boy who threw tantrums and abandoned other boys when they herded cattle. Revelations that would help illuminate the man’s behaviour in later years. Brutal approach He wanted everything done his way. He never tolerated dissent during the liberation struggle and after. He stoked controversy on his role in the death of Josiah Tongogara, the Zanla commander in 1979 in order to ostensibly consolidate his control over Zanu PF. Tongogara preferred a united front under Joshua Nkomo. After independence, having decided Zimbabwe would be a one party state, he demanded and required full compliance and loyalty. When his comrades questioned it, they were sidelined or worse. He brutalized Joshua Nkomo and his party for resisting the one-party state. He coveted and desired absolute power. Always wary and spiteful of contenders to power in Zanu PF. He jettisoned erstwhile right-hand comrades like Edgar Tekere, Edison Zvobgo, Dizikamai Mavhaire, Margaret Dongo, Enos Nkala, Solomon Mujuru, Moyo Mutswangwa, Didymus Mutasa, Emmerson Mnangagwa. Then he toyed with THE FLAG October 2019 them by bringing some of them back when he felt they had learnt their lesson. The lesson that there is only one leader. And his name is Mugabe. He maintained a divide and rule system built of fear and suspicion. His comrades both feared him and mistrusted each other and could never muster a revolt against him. Attempts to do so were sure to be fatal with many dying under suspicious circumstances – usually car accidents, alleged poisoning or other undisclosed sudden illness – methods which his comrades readily used against each other. To ensure his comrades toed the line, he built a zero-sum, kill or be killed, do-or-die party system in which you were either in or out. Once out you either fled into exile or were stripped of everything the party had allowed you to accumulate. Gukurahundi He was aloof and cold. Vengeful and unforgiving. In 1980, fearful of Joshua Nkomo, his party and better trained guerillas, he spent considerable resources to build his own army militia answerable to him and ready to do his political and ethnic bloodletting. The Gukurahundi or 5th Brigade was a private army with instructions to kill, rape, torture and plunder Joshua Nkomo and his supporters into submission. He did not stop, until 20,000 people were dead. He would never have stopped had Nkomo not capitulated and sworn allegiance to his authority. Only total submission and subjugation assuaged Mugabe. There is nothing in his record that shows benevolence or democratic credentials. He never sought to build a nation but stoked and amplified tribal differences advantaging his Zezuru clansmen and entrenching a sense of exclusion and marginalisation amongst other clans. In the 1980s he spoke of destroying opposition Zapu and he kept his promise through Gukurahundi killing thousands of its largely Ndebele supporters. He left a country more ethnically divided than it was when the liberation struggle began. He ethnicised politics and politicised ethnicity, conveniently labeling the multi-ethnic Zapu as a Ndebele party as a pretext to destroy it. His demagoguery left Zimbabwe collectively
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Rhosarian 2019

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