A post mortem on Zimbabwe

Mugabe used to be a health tonic during the liberation struggle but is now like a bad wound of a diabetic that is failing to heal, yesterday's hero turned today's tyrant. Tsvangirai used to be the symbol of hope for a nation in distress but with his failure to clinch a GNU deal he is now the symbol of failure to get rid of dictatorship. Zimbabwe used to be the bread basket of Africa but is now a basket case. The economy which had a foreign exchange rate at par with the British Pound when Mugabe took it over from Smith now has a currency that is so worthless that the country has resorted to using the reserve currency. Zimbabwe's education system used to be ranked as one of the best in Africa but is now ranked one of the worst. Harare used to be called the sunshine city because of its smartness but is now called the cholera city because of the germ-infested dirt in its running water system and the dirt all over the city due to the refuse collection services that are now history. Every essential system in the country that used to be efficiently and effectively functional is now either closed like the hospitals for example or functioning unprofessionally, unethically and unprofitably like Telone, (the company that is the backbone for telecommunications, data and internet services in the whole country) for example. In short, Zimbabwe lies in ruins. What exactly went wrong in Zimbabwe, what caused this drastic and steep fall from grace? In this article I will do a post mortem on Zimbabwe and tell you the way I, personally, see it.

Here are the results of the post mortem:
1. Mugabe is the man who was at the helm when the country deteriorated and so this deterioration reflects his bad leadership. Why didn't he take measures to stop the deterioration. Why did he allow some of his ministers to manage the different ministries, corruptly, unethically and unprofessionally. He might have been duped by panel beaten reports from the different ministries which lied that everything was alright but then why didn't he ensure that there were frequent, strict and independent audits in all the parastals and government departments. Why didn't he see to it that justice was applied indiscriminately to everyone irrespective of his/her position in government. He blames his government's failure which caused the country's ills on the West which he accuses of sanctioning Zimbabwe under Tsvangirai's advice yet he has always been quick to shout that he doesn't need the West. The West pulled out their investment from Zimbabwe mainly because of his unprofessional land grabbing exercise that saw commercial farmers being chucked out of farms they had invested in, without any compensation and his constant rhetoric saying bad things about the West. This unprofessional behaviour resulted in investors loosing confidence in doing business in Zimbabwe. Good business etiquette, common sense, good public relations and diplomacy tells you that you don't treat the people you do business with that way because if you do they will take their business elsewhere and for sure that is what happened, investors closed their industries and shops in Zimbabwe and moved to neighbouring countries. My post mortem shows that Mugabe's problem is mainly post traumatic disorder. During the liberation struggle Mugabe was badly tortured by the white Rhodesians under Smith's rule. The story has it that at one time he had his balls electrocuted by the prison guards when he had been imprisoned for fighting to liberate blacks from whites' rule. Such brutal immense torture is bound to affect a normal person psychologically and after independence Mugabe was supposed to be attended to by a psychologist so that he is cured from the post traumatic disorder caused by his horrendious experiences during the liberation struggle but nothing like that happened. His intense hatred of the West and the British in particular shows that he never healed from the inner wounds inflicted on his mind, his heart and his soul by those bad experiences. It is because of his intense hatred of the British that clouded his reasoning and caused him to throw caution out of the window and overreact to Tony Blair's refusal to compensate land to white farmers as previously agreed in the Lancaster House agreement. It is this same intense hatred of the British that makes him regard Tsvangirai's good relationship with the British with suspicion and causes him to hesitate forming a government of national unity with him. As you can see Mugabe's hatred of the West is a sickness that was left to eat away the body for too long and is now costing a life, except in this particular instance it is costing more than one life, it is costing a whole nation. Hatred is a very dangerous emotion which should never be allowed to fester and seethe inside a person for too long. The other problem with Mugabe is his false sense of grandiose that is at best egoistic and at worst myopic. This attitude is a result of him being lied to over the years by his intelligence, his ministers and his relatives that he is still liked by most Zimbabweans and when he saw the crowds that attended his rallies he believed them, not knowing that most of those people who attended had been forced to do so by threats. This is why he was so shocked by his defeat in the March 2008 elections and failed to accept the defeat and while he was in denial he ordered ZEC to cook up the voting figures so that there is a run-off. His statements show that he thinks that he is God's gift to Zimbabwe. Take for instance his remark recently when he uttered repeatedly, "Zimbabwe is mine, mine, mine." Since when has a country belonged to one person. His myopic false sense of grandiose reminds me of another dictator, Idi Amin of Uganda. Idi Amin arrogated on himself the following titles "His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in general and Uganda in particular." It is imperative that humility be one of the qualities of the leader of a nation because without that quality a leader can be so egoistic that his decisions will be clouded and always inclined torwards serving his own face and not serving the needs of the people. It is this lack of humility in Mugabe that makes him refuse to see the writing on the wall and continue to cling to power at such an old age. His other problem is the communist ideolgy that was instilled into his brain during the liberation struggle. The Marxist/Leninist theories in his head makes him immune to seeing the goodness of democracy and results in him doing whatever it takes to kill democracy in the country and maintain a one party state system like the one implemented in China.

2.Tsvangirai is the trade or labour unionist turned politician who was brave enough to stand up against Mugabe and his indomitable armed forces and intelligence forces and form a party to contest Mugabe's Zanu PF. Ever since he did that he has been charged with so many crimes by Mugabe's government, all of them meant to silence him and kill his MDC party's potential to win elections and rule the country. Had it not been for Zanu PF's rigging MDC would have started ruling this country as way back as 2002. Tsvangirai is a democrat and it is that fact that makes him have support from democratic Western nations which Mugabe's post traumatic disordered mind interprets as being puppetry. Tsvangirai's main problem is lack of diplomacy, for example his statements of disrespect towards SADC and AU whom he thinks favour Mugabe and are ineffective. Good political etiquette, common sense, good public relations and diplomacy tells you that you don't utter statements like that to your neighbours who are the go-betweens between you and your rival in negotiations that can make or break the country you are aspiring to rule. It is those utterances which showed disrespect that I suspect resulted in SADC taking a stance against him and his MDC party during the equitable power sharing GNU deals even though his demands were reasonable and in line with the definition of equitable power sharing. The overall result is a Zimbabwe in limbo which is sinking deeper and deeper in ruins without any end in sight.

3. Zimbabwe is now a basket case because of most of the new farmers that were given land taken away from white commercial farmers who instead of utilising the land to the maximum come rain or drought, decided to sell the farming inputs donated to them by the government and misuse the agricultural loans granted to them by Agribank. Their being given those farms meant that they had to carry the burden of feeding the whole nation but they saw it as a get-rich-quick opportunity meant for their individual benefit. What the government failed to see when allocating the farms was that commercial farming was like any other business that needs qualified people for it to be successful. The result was a nation in serious hunger, let me apprise you of the current rather desperate hunger situation so that you understand it even more clearly than you do at present. We as a nation are bankrupt of maize-meal, our staple food. We used up our emergency grain supplies long back. They're ... long gone. If there is a sudden shift of weather patterns this year and crops fail again this year... we as a nation will become extinct. This is an issue of immense importance, that has like a thief in the night, stolen away our ability to survive in a drought, yet only a few short years ago, a drought would have been only a minor inconvenience. To make matters worse, because of hyper-inflation in the country, food is not being produced in local industries, it is being imported and as a result costing much more so prices of basic foodstuffs have become unaffordable to ordinary citizens. If people do not know where their next meal is coming from, there will be Trouble, and that's with a capital 'T' and that means trouble for everyone.


Let me end here for today, to be continued so look out for, "A post mortem on Zimbabwe, part two."