OUTSIDE LOOKING IN: A letter from the diaspora
By Pauline Henson
Apparently South Africans are about to be treated to a specially televised visit to Zimbabwe’s State House to witness the Mugabe family ‘at home’, looking and behaving just like any other family in the land.
It’s all part of a plan to “spruce up Mugabe’s image” and it’s not the first time it has been tried.
So, he and Grace are gathered around the dining table where they and their children chat and reminisce about the past like any other family – or that’s the impression they want to give but, of course, they are not like any other African couple.
The spotless white napery and the ‘family silver’ are not exactly typical of how African families live in the high density suburbs where there may not even be water or power. It’s hard to believe that anyone will be taken in by this attempt to revive Mugabe’s image.
The fact that he is an ordinary family man does not exclude the possibility of another less endearing side of him – even Hitler loved dogs! Mugabe is the consummate politician whose past shows that he will stop at nothing to keep Zanu PF and himself in power.
Perhaps it is not his own people that Mugabe is interested in impressing but the outside world. We are told he is very concerned with his ‘legacy’ these days which I take to mean what will the history books say about him?
Will he be regarded as the great African leader who brought freedom to his people suffering under the colonial yoke or will he be seen as just another power-hungry African dictator?
These days his rhetoric is all about peace and harmony but while he talks of peace his followers do the exact opposite and sections of his Zanu PF party are following quite another agenda.
Harare South was this week a virtual war zone after Zanu PF attacked MDC activists and in another incident there was a brutal attack on teachers and children at a school in Lower Gweru by a group of thugs carrying machetes and knives.
13 people were injured, some of them seriously. The fact that police once again failed to intervene suggests, as the MDC’s aspiring candidate for the area commented, that “it is our opponents who are sponsoring these unknown youths.”
One of the most tragic facts about the Zimbabwean situation is surely the use of youngsters to commit these heinous acts of violence.
Mugabe’s Vice President Joyce Mujuru echoed the call for peace and non-violence this week. Ironically, it was at the funeral of the notorious CIO agent Kanengoni when she spoke words of peace.
Elias Kanengoni was in fact a convicted assassin, sentenced to seven years in gaol for shooting the Gweru mayor Patrick Kombayi. Even then, Mugabe intervened to protect his agent; he used his Presidential powers to free Kanengoni from prison.
And this week, Kanengoni was declared a ‘national hero’; a man who had personally orchestrated the violence in Chiweshe which killed 14 MDC supporters in the 2008 election campaign.
The African Union is fifty years old this year and there is much talk about whether the continent has fulfilled Kwame Nkrumah’s dream of a united continent.
Mugabe was there in Addis Abbaba at the AU and 24 hours after his return to Zimbabwe he flew off to Japan for an African Development Conference, accompanied of course by his wife, Grace and all the usual hangers-on.
Africa’s development might be better served if this particular leader stopped jetting round the world but then, perhaps he believes that attendance at all these international events shows the world what a great leader he is.
Only time will tell but the ultimate test of any leader’s worth is surely the state in which he leaves his people and his country. Will Robert Mugabe pass that test?
Yours in the (continuing) struggle, Pauline Henson.