Educating Boris Johnson et al on Zimbabwe

By Vince Musewe

OPINION – I have just read Boris Johnson the Lord Mayor of London’s tirade against Mugabe and Tony Blair with curious intrigue. 

I am compelled to add a new perceptive to help Boris and others in the UK better understand the root causes of the emergence of a ruthless dictator in Zimbabwe and the consequences thereof.

Please note that, for the avoidance of any doubt, I agree with Boris in his condemnation of what Mugabe has become. However, we need to be very careful and realise that we Zimbabweans have contributed significantly to creating the circumstances which we currently face.

In my opinion, it is rather a simplistic view to blame the causes of Zimbabwe’s economic decline and the emergence of predatory liberation struggle cabal to the somewhat jaundiced views of things by Claire Short. Personally I think that her reaction to the problem faced then reveals a naïve appreciation of Zimbabwe’s politics. She clearly was out of her depth and we have all suffered for it. This however does not exonerate the British from contributing to the problem, but they were never the primary reason.

I agree with Boris that Tony Blair’s team messed up and made some decisions that had far reaching negative consequences on the relationship between Zimbabwe and the United Kingdom. However that is now history.

From my Reading Tony Blair’s auto biography- The Journey- I think he is an intelligent man but I suspect that his decisions on Zimbabwe then, might have been influenced by his advisors who may not have fully appreciated the rather complex colonial history of Zimbabwe and the emerging geopolitics at independence in 1980.

Readers must appreciate in 1983 tom 1987 Mugabe ruthlessly dealt with ZAPU in a bid to create his one party state delusion. A crime against humanity was committed and the world watched with disinterest. He never lost his touch from then.

Around 1993, Zimbabwe had to go through an economic structural adjustment programme promoted by the IMF as the solution to deal with increasing unemployment, declining growth and a self-manufactured economic collapse. In 1997 the Zimbabwe dollar collapsed due the demand by war veterans for gratuities from Mugabe. In 1998 Zimbabwe went into the DRC to fight a costly war that costs an estimated USD 2 million a day.

It was in 1999 that the MDC was established to challenge the Mugabe regime and on the airing of a cheque donation by white commercial farmers on national television, Mugabe lost it and reacted violently because he knew his game was up.

By that time, there was also a growing realisation and pressure from within ZANU (PF) that Mugabe had to go. He had to survive at all costs. Farm invasion in Zimbabwe were primarily caused by Mugabe’s fear of losing power and not because the British refused fund land reform.

By decimating the white commercial farming sector, this helped Mugabe to destroy a very strong rural constituent base that could support the MDC. It is estimated that 350,000 rural based farming families suffered because overnight their livelihoods went up in smoke.

The thinking by Mugabe here was that of you disempowered the white employers; their employees would be at his mercy. If you want to kill a snake you cut its head off, as Mugabe said with regard to ZAPU’s Joshua Nkomo during Gukurahundi in the 80’s.

This is true especially after seeing how white farmers provided transport to their workers to deliver a “No” vote on constitutional changes in 2000 which Mugabe lost dismally.

Farm invasions destroyed an organised and very powerful political rural constituency and by destroying that sector, he disempowered his enemy. Mugabe cared very little of its economic consequences and worse, he clearly does not understand economics anyway.

Remember that in 2005 Mugabe did the same in the urban areas through Murambatsvina where 700,000 informal businesses were destroyed,300,000 homes crushed and 1,2 million people displaced because they were MDC urban strongholds- nothing else.

The economic meltdown that we now face is a result of years and years of Mugabe’s obsession with power at all costs and the entrenchment of a predatory liberation struggle cabal that is plundering our resources.

I guess it is easy and simple to blame Tony Blair and his team, but in my opinion, we Zimbabwean manufactured our own demise and with a little help from friends like the IMF, things really got worse.

Mugabe is very good at reframing problem situations and blaming others. That is his talent he has gotten away with it for far too long. Boris has fallen for his bait.

Political and economic problems arise because of complex and variable interrelationships between actions of omission or commission among those with vested interests in desired outcomes. There is therefore never a single cause of outcomes.

It is therefore rather comfortable and intellectually lazy to say that the economic meltdown and the emergence of a dictator like Mugabe in Zimbabwe was primarily caused by exogenous forces such as Tony Blair refusal to fund land reform- that is untrue. The same applies to sanctions.

Vince Musewe is an economist, author and President of Zimbabwe First! You may contact him on [email protected]