The mad president

By Boyd Madikila

The insistence by a nonagenarian Robert Gabriel Mugabe that after 37 years in power not even a single member of his Zanu PF party is good or fit enough to succeed his fragile bones as President is beyond laughable.

It can only be best explained as dementia and insanity of a mad king or ruler. Ironically Mugabe himself brags that he has educated his nation such that Zimbabwe now has arguably the highest literacy rate in Africa yet the same so called educated citizens are still not good enough to sit on his throne.

What madness explains this contradiction save to say Mugabe thinks of his subjects as educated fools! It takes a brief tour into the history of Mugabe’s reign to realize that like many kings and rulers in history, our President is suffering from a paranoid personality disorder and acute narcissism.

Mugabe, the paranoid character assassin.

When Mugabe arrived in Mozambique in 1977 to join the liberation war, historians tell us he was confronted by a skeptical guerrilla force that viewed the intellectuals like him with serpentine distrust.

The liberation war legend goes further to say it took the persuasion and leadership of the late General Rex Nhongo (Mujuru) to bring affinity between Mugabe and the guerrillas.

In other words Mujuru was instrumental in lifting Mugabe to the throne and after Independence a younger Mugabe, in control of his faculties returned the gratitude by making Mujuru Commander General of armed forces and in 2004 appointed Mujuru’s wife Joyce, Vice President of both the party and the Republic.

But alas in 2011, General Mujuru was assassinated in a staged fire at his farm and what followed after that left the whole nation shell shocked and some of us are yet to recover from that disbelief.

No sooner had the General’s body decomposed into dust that Mugabe started verbally lambasting the dead General from his grave and soon unleashed his wife on the unsuspecting widow of his erstwhile benefactor. State resources including Presidential helicopters, motorcades and funding were availed to the viper-mouth Mrs Grace Mugabe for her so called meet the people rallies that were in fact merely Anti-Mujuru crusades.

Mrs Mugabe attacked Mrs Mujuru at these rallies, on national Television and in Zanu PF meetings. We were told Amai Mujuru was a witch, sacrificing chickens to overthrow Mugabe; we heard she was incompetent, fat, and ugly as a hippo that slept her way to power. A long standing liberation war legend that Amai Mujuru shot down a Rhodesian enemy helicopter was unceremoniously revoked as lies in an attempt to re-write history.

In the meantime a self-assured Mrs Mugabe promised a shocked nation that she will release secret sex tapes of Mujuru romping in hotels. In all this vitriol, Mugabe played the silent assassin, not uttering a word of disapproval, that it was untoward of the First lady to publicly undress the Vice President of the Republic in public. In shona, the grannies would have exclaimed in agape – “aya mashura chaiwo!”

But Mugabe eventually showed his approval of Mrs Mugabe’s underhand tactics by expelling Mrs Mujuru from both party and government. More madness followed. Mugabe expelled all his provincial Chairpersons, expelled his best friend and confidante Didymus Mutasa, expelled most of his cabinet Ministers including Amos Midzi who later committed suicide, war veterans Leader Jabulani Sibanda,  Dare reChimurenga veteran Rugare Gumbo, the indefatigable Dzikamai Mavhaire and many others.

Even long time praise singer Webster Shamu of the ‘Mugabe is like cremora fame’ was not spared. As if that was not enough, Mugabe expelled the war veterans from the party they fought for by unleashing the police to tear gas the heroes of our liberation. Our heroes shed tears like babies. All this madness was played on the nation by a paranoid President for the sole purpose of preserving his absolute power.

VaMugabe, Chete-chete.

In the meantime the country continues to burn; Unemployment at 98 %, 4 million citizens fleeing their country like it’s a war zone, civil servants go for months unpaid, bond paper has become official currency, the state is now officially broke and the country is now just ‘’mamvemve’’, to quote the prophecy of that sagacious chimurenga music  legend Thomas ‘’Tafirenyika’’ Mapfumo.

As for the so called ‘Rambosque’ war veterans like Christopher Mutsvangwa, the writing is on the wall that the Zanu PF liberation war was not fought to liberate Zimbabwe but to prop up Mugabe’s mad quest to rule forever, even from the grave.  

History is replete with caricatures of mad kings and rulers who suffered from dementia, paranoia, personality disorders and narcissism that very much explained their erratic and often cruel irrational behavior. And Mugabe fits these caricatures like a murderer’s hand to the blood stained glove.

There was Tiberius the Roman Emperor from 42BC-37AD who had a paranoid personality disorder and thought himself a god with the powers of life and death and exerted great cruelty on his subjects including sexually molested children to prove the point;

There was Caligula 12-41 AD who was an anti-social ruler with personality disorder and narcissism who even made his own horse a senator and ordered political prisoners decapitated over dinner;

There was Nero 37-68 AD, Nephew to Caligula who suffered from a histrionic personality disorder and ordered the killing of his own mother and brother so that he can declare himself an unparalleled god;

There was Commodus 161-192 AD who was such a narcissist that he ordered his servant to be burnt to death for making his bath water cold.

In Africa history reminds us of King Shaka, the great warrior King who suffered from a narcissist personality disorder such that on his mother’s death, he ordered hundreds innocent civilians killed for not showing enough remorse.

These mad kings and rulers also prevailed in not so distant times, like Pol Pot the Cambodian dictator who suffered from narcissistic personality disorder, was a sociopath and a megalomania who drank French wine while personally choreographing mass executions of his political opponents;

And Hitler who dissolved 6 million Jews in acid gas chambers to cleanse Germany population of foreign genes and create a pure Germany of the perfect Aryan race.  

Not to forget Kamuzu Banda from neighboring Malawi, who banned opposition politics, imprisoned and killed over 18 000 opposition activists, proclaimed Malawi a one party state and declared himself a Life President of both his party and country. Kamuzu is also rumored to have decreed that every woman in Malawi must wear a ‘chitenje’ with a picture of his face printed on it.  

From Napoleon to Mussolini and our own Idi Amini Dada in Africa, these rulers displayed irrational and erratic behaviors caused by a warped sense of self importance, personality disorders, narcissism and paranoia.

In all cases this pathology of evil caused these mad rulers to visit upon their people unprecedented misery, cruelty and mass deaths. Like Mugabe, these men were mad kings and rulers who displayed poor governing skills coupled with a disorientation from the reality of the suffering they were causing on their people.

Mugabe, the mad king.

Robert Gabriel Mugabe has already self-diagnosed himself with this ‘’mad king’’ syndrome by referring to the Gukurahundi massacres, where he directly presided over the slaughtering of 30 000 Ndebele citizens in a space of 3 years, as a ‘’moment of madness’’.

Other moments of madness include Murambatsvina where almost a million city dwellers were rendered homeless after Mugabe’s bulldozers razed their homes to the ground without compensation or a relocation plan.

Another was Operation Mavhotera papi where thousands of rural folks were terrorized and burnt alive in their huts for voting for the MDC in 2008, while their crops and cattle were looted. Random assassination and ‘disappearances’ have also become the modus operand of our own ‘mad King’ with the disappearance of Rashiwe Guzha, Itai Dzamara and many nameless others remaining unresolved.

To quote Zapu Supremo Dumiso Dabengwa, Mugabe is too petrified to imagine himself out of office for fear of persecution for human rights crimes.  

“His fear is to face justice for his dark human rights violations in the event he loses power, which is inevitable. Such are the fears of a dictator whose hands drip of blood of innocent Zimbabweans from all facets of life” said Dabengwa on Mugabe s paranoia.

Mugabe, the narcissist.

One only needs to revisit some of the utterances of Mugabe’s appendages to unveil the disturbing levels of narcissism and myopic grandeur on display. Some Zanu PF ministers refer to Mugabe as Jesus, others have called him messiah or god. Recently, Zanu PF Secretary for Youths Kudzai Chipanga has claimed Mugabe stopped the rain so his birthday celebrations in Matobo could go ahead undisturbed.

Mugabe himself revels in these superhuman praises and more often than not promotes those who commit such blasphemy. The evidence on the ground also supports that Mugabe suffers from acute narcissism.

For example, every Zanu PF regalia has his image, every building in every city has the image of him nailed high up on every wall and street lights, all main roads or avenues in every city in Zimbabwe is called a Robert Mugabe Road and there are plans to rename airports and universities after him.

Plans are already afoot to make Mugabe’s birthday a national holiday, to make Mugabe rule from a wheelbarrow, later on make Mugabe rule from the grave and perhaps after that he will be declared the paramount ancestor of all Zimbabweans to be worshipped like the gods.

Mugabe, dear reader, is a caricature of a mad king!

Boyd Madikila can be reached on [email protected]. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa.