The Zimbabwe that Robert Mugabe came to lead had every chance of being one of Africa’s richest post-colonial gems but became an economic basket case instead.
Some of the millions who form part of the Zimbabwean diaspora say there is little to be proud of beyond Mugabe’s fight for independence.
Even as Mugabe was fighting a losing battle against ill health, Zimbabweans were dealing with yet another economic slide – part of a process which began as a direct consequence of his heavy-handed misrule.
Gideon Chitanga, a political analyst summed up pithily: “Mugabe was a liberation hero-turned dictator.”
The view from South Africa where many of the three million Zimbabweans who fled the country struggle to make ends meet, is no different.
Enoch, a university-educated Zimbabwean who has been in South Africa since Mugabe’s repression of the Movement for Democratic Change, said he was not sorry to hear of the death, adding, “pity it took so long”.
“Okay, so Mugabe was part of the liberation struggle. But he ran the country to the ground. When he got into trouble with the people, he began to do crazy things like encouraging the ex-combatants – most being far too young to have fought in the war – to take over white farms. That chaos destroyed the economy,” Enoch, who is a waiter in Cape Town and has no intention of returning to Zimbabwe, said.
“From 2000 onwards, Mugabe lost legitimacy. There were those who supported him, but we knew he was messing.”
“Then he stole the elections in 2002 and 2008, with many beaten, killed and jailed. That’s when most of us knew he would likely stay in power until he died.”
“I was also dancing in the streets when he was thrown out in 2017 but there’ll be no dancing tonight. It’s too late for that.”
Growing up mid-20th century in colonial Rhodesia, there was no sense of an alternative to white minority rule for black or white youngsters.
Despite 80 years of direct colonial rule from London and then white minority regime, the mineral and agriculturally-rich country has never been riven with racial hatred – as was South Africa, despite a similar history. Even at the height of the liberation war of the 1970s, race relations in Zimbabwe were surprisingly cordial.
While the Matabele were always feisty, their spirit was destroyed along with many hundreds of villages during the repression imposed by Mugabe and his North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade in the early 1980s.
Some 20,000 people are believed to have been killed during the insurrection by loyalists of Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union and then in a general assault on mainly Matabeles.
“I have met many people who were arrested and beaten or threatened or members of their families were killed, all by Mugabe’s thugs. How can we remember Mugabe as a hero?” Enoch asked. “Mnangagwa is saying Mugabe was a hero. That was a long time ago.”
Amu Gula Ndebele, another exiled Zimbabwean, said whatever his liberation credentials, Mugabe failed the country once he was president.
“Mugabe, or those arguing for him, cannot make the excuse that external forces were responsible for what happened under his rule,” he said.
Another Zimbabwean was severe in his assessment.
“He never got justice. It would have been much better if he had died in prison,” the man who did not want to be named said.
At the local beer hall where many Zimbabweans and other foreigners gather on weekends to drink and watch sport, mainly soccer, on a large-screen TV, the view is much the same.
Mugabe may have been a liberation hero once, a long time ago, but since then he had done so much that ordinary Zimbabweans in exile consider “evil” that he could never be admired, nor shall his memory be carried forward without the dark stain of his ruthless inhumanity to any and all opponents.
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