Zimbabwe must avoid Libyan tragedy

By Mutsa Murenje

I chose not to be a trog and I wouldn’t want to be one now. I see no reason why I should sing praises to a brutal, rotten, oppressive, unjust and evil regime such as Robert Mugabe’s.

I can definitely do better than that for unlike his blind followers and pretenders like Jonathan Moyo; I don’t have bad social skills and low intelligence. Instead, I detest political trivia, tripe, garbage and rubbish.

It is, has been and will always be my desire to be not only a statesman but also a scholar and one of the few original thinkers of my day.

When you have become a real fighter for what you believe in and for what is right, you will meet people who fear for your life and you may as well have to know if you, also, are afraid for your life. In essence, your safety and security matters to those dear to you.

These might have noticed that you are ‘living rather dangerously’, to borrow one of the late Masipula Sithole’s favourite phrases. Whatever the case might be, I am not afraid of evil people because I know I am standing for that which is right. It is a just cause and one that I am willing to die for.

“Cowards die many times before their death. The valiant taste of death but only once” (William Shakespeare).

There can be no doubt that there is no clear consensus on what constitutes democracy. I am, however, of the viewpoint that there are some generally agreed guidelines on how leaders should conduct themselves when governing their people.

In particular, I honestly think that citizens won’t be demanding too much if they ask their leaders to guarantee them free and fair elections, free speech and respect for fundamental human rights. Democracy is by its nature, a product of cultural evolution, indeed a by-product of modernity.

It embodies ideas, ideals and orientations, and has developed a sense of propriety through conventional practice and historical consensus. Perhaps this explains why the present world has no place for dictatorship.

The world no longer sees it fit to accommodate people like Mugabe who murder to stay and eventually die in power! Dictatorship has apparently become the greatest challenge and troubling phenomenon facing the world today although it is a particularly serious problem in Africa.

The issue of dictatorship recently assumed international significance especially in light of the anti-government protests that consumed, earlier, the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt and recently led to the violent death of Africa’s strongman and long-serving dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya three in October 2011.

Genuinely rational politics requires membership in a particular type of moral community.

In my postgraduate thesis entitled ‘The State of Refugees in Cape Town, South Africa’, I make reference to ‘The Addis Ababa Document on Refugees and Forced Population Displacements in Africa’ which notes that refugee flows are nothing but a symbol of the crises which afflict many societies in Africa.

In particular, most of the refugee flows are the result of armed conflicts and civil strife. The following quote further clarifies this observation:

Since the 1950s, many nations in Africa have suffered civil wars and ethnic strife, thus generating a massive number of refugees of many different nationalities and ethnic groups. The division of Africa into European colonies in 1885, along which lines the newly independent nations of the 1950s and 1960s drew their borders, has been cited as a major reason why Africa has been so plagued with intrastate warfare (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Refugee, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugee).

Ethnic intolerance; the abuse of human rights on a massive scale; the monopolisation of political and economic power; refusal to respect democracy or the results of free and fair elections; resistance to popular participation in governance; and poor management of public affairs all play a part in forcing people to flee their normal places of residence.

Nmoma (1997:2) argues that Africa is not only faced with natural catastrophes, such as droughts and famine which produce economic (survival migrants) refugees, but it is also afflicted with wars.

In her opinion, civil wars, ethnic strife, human rights abuses, coups and oppressive governments are the most important factors responsible for the large numbers of refugees on the continent.

In relation to what happened to Gaddafi in Libya, I have now realised that these underlying, structural and deep-rooted conditions in society do not only generate refugees but are also capable of consuming the leadership in the most vulgar manner.

Conditions in Libya were conducive to Gaddafi’s violent end.

Overwhelming disparity between the minority rich and the majority poor, long-term political oppression or military rule or the social and economic oppression of one ethnic group by another, increasing popular discontent, political arrests and attacks against civilian demonstrations can be a source of discontent and conflict.

These conditions were rife and rampant in Libya. A key element in understanding the context and situation in an escalating conflict is the ability to read warning signs of trouble and indicators of increasing tension or violence, which is the basis for “conflict early warning” analysis.

Gaddafi dismally failed to take notice of these signs and indicators of trouble. If he noticed them he ignored them out of his own folly. Had he listened to the cries and aspirations of his people, there could be no doubt that Gaddafi would have saved himself from such a bloody end.

The problem with people like Gaddafi is that they never listen to anybody even if they know they are in the wrong. Thus, he vowed to fight till the last man, the last woman and of course the last bullet. Were it not for NATO intervention I am sure Gaddafi would have exterminated his opponents.

He clearly saw what happened in Tunisia and probably heard what transpired in Egypt and Cote d’Ivoire but he could not redeem himself. He wanted to make all the mistakes himself! And we are now using him as a quintessence of what can happen if you fail to listen to your people’s cries.

The polity has nuanced and no one really wants to patiently adjust to dictatorship. This explains why the Libyan revolutionaries also vowed to fight till the end. Gaddafi had outlived his usefulness.

The writing is on the wall for Africa’s remaining dictators particularly the octogenarian tyrant in Zimbabwe, Mugabe. Gaddafi wanted to die a martyr but a villain he died. Those are the deadlier consequences of dictatorship or taking your citizens for granted.

Gaddafi deserved his gory end. I cannot commiserate with a dictator; my sympathies are with the people he oppressed for 42 years. I wish Mugabe could take notice of this and stop abusing the electoral process. He will surely not get away with it, definitely not this time!

Aluta Continua! The struggle continues unabated!