By Richard Gandari
When the Union Jack was lowered and handed to Prince Charles on 18 April 1980 at Rufaro Stadium in Harare, no one would have guessed that it was the beginning of Zimbabwe’s demise.
Many considered it the beginning of prosperity and advancement for the black majority, under the assurance of self-rule. The ideals of Marxist ideology proselytized throughout the liberation struggle meant that everyone would get a piece of the cake in the new republic.
The people’s euphoria at Independence made it treasonous to even slightly suggest that self-rule could easily mutate into self-ruin. Without institutional checks and balances, it was not long before things morphed into George Orwell’s Animal Farm scenario.
The paradox of Zimbabwe’s independence needs careful dissection. Viewed from afar, it put an end to the Rhodesian white minority rule and its accompanying evils. Yet a closer inspection will reveal how independence actually paved the way for a black minority elite which quickly turned into the average citizen’s worst nightmare.
It would be naïve to make a blanket assertion that colonialism was better than post-independence Zimbabwe but no objective analysis can ignore the structural failures of the latter. Central to the failure of the independence project was Robert Mugabe’s power-hungry desire for a one-party state. Mugabe turned ZANU into Zimbabwe and narrowed the definition of citizenship to his party membership.
The conflation of party and state sealed Zimbabwe’s fate. In essence, every statutory entity with an acronym starting or ending with the letter Z became an appendage of ZANU. So, in Mugabe’s warped view there existed statutory bodies like ZANU National Army, ZANU Republic Police, ZANU Broadcasting Corporation, National Railways of ZANU and Reserve Bank of ZANU. This humongous enterprise of state capture is proudly portrayed by the party flag of ZANU. One can easily mistake it for Zimbabwe’s national flag.
Many philosophers agree that when war breaks out its first casualty is the truth. In his quest to establish himself as the supreme ruler of ZANU, also known as Zimbabwe, Mugabe faced an uncomfortable hindrance. There was a party called PF ZAPU, whose armed wing ZPRA, had equally waged war on the settler regime during the liberation struggle. Mugabe was a product of ZANLA which protracted the struggle from Mozambique. ZPRA operated from Zambia. It was impossible to obfuscate the role played by ZPRA combatants during the liberation struggle. Independence demanded their acknowledgement and integration into regular army units.
Unable to alter the past, Mugabe dealt with the present by eliminating everything with ties to ZAPU and ZPRA. Minus these two thorns in his flesh, Mugabe could brainwash the masses with an inflated version of history, portraying himself as a bullet-spraying ZANLA superhero. Through his handpicked henchmen, the diminutive commander-in-chief set into motion a succession of calamities that culminated in the Gukurahundi genocide. The carnage began with the assassination of a ZAPU leader, Stanislaus Murongiwa Marembo at his home through a car bomb on 6 February 1981. Nobody was ever held responsible for the terrorist attack.
Things escalated a year later, with the government’s convenient discovery of arms caches around Matabeleland. Crossing of the Rubicon came through the pointblank shooting of ZPRA veteran and serving ZNA member Cyprene Ndiweni by Air Chief Marshal Josiah Tungamirai, during a routine parade on 16 August 1982.
This direct provocation led to mass disaffection among the ZPRA veterans in the ZNA. Fearing for their lives, many deserted their posts and discarded their army fatigues. Mugabe instantly labelled them dissidents. In January 1983, the 5th Brigade was deployed in Matabeleland, to eliminate all dissidents, real and perceived. What followed was 5 years of wanton bloodletting which Mugabe summarized as a moment of madness.
Having channelled all his energy and focus towards annihilating ZAPU and ZPRA, Mugabe abandoned any efforts to establish Zimbabwe as an economic powerhouse. The façade of economic progress or stability were driven by the vast colonial legacy inherited by Mugabe and his cronies at Independence.
The honeymoon lasted for close to a decade with Mugabe fooling his people at home and many nations around the world. While his 5th Brigade mercenaries massacred hapless citizens in Matabeleland, Mugabe made sure nothing was reported via his tightly controlled state media. The wily Machiavellian strategist kept his people drunk on bread and circus. Elections became an intermittent charade mainly to hoodwink the international community. From the very first polls in 1980, Zimbabwe would never know a free and fair election. One man one vote would remain a mere slogan.
The killing and raping spree during Gukurahundi were so carefully concealed that when you describe them today you risk being labelled an alarmist. In the words of successive police spokespersons since 1990, whoever talks about Zimbabwe’s darkest epoch is an unruly element determined to cause alarm and despondency. Yet the truth is self-evident. Zimbabwe is a failed state today because of Mugabe’s Gukurahundi. Many quickly point to serial rigged elections as the root cause of Zimbabwe’s economic collapse.
That view is informed by visible symptoms rather than the hidden actual cause. The paramount reason Mugabe and his successors have tried every trick under the sun to cling on to power is the fear of being prosecuted for their respective roles with regard to the Gukurahundi genocide. Without their statutory insulation, Mugabe and other perpetrators of Gukurahundi would have been prosecuted either by the Zimbabwean justice system or abroad via the International Criminal Court. Hence for Mugabe’s henchmen, power retention is a must.
To them, it does not matter how the economy and people suffer. Disputed elections are just a periodic nuisance to be endured. Democracy demands multi-party, political contestation but for ZANU it represents the hangman’s noose. Four decades later, the country that held so much promise at Independence is now a barren economic wasteland. A whole middle class has vanished with its members relegated to permanent poverty. Tragically, that is the cost of tyranny
What more do you want? the description, the narration is very clear even to the deaf and dump, that Zimbabwe’s misery is all man-made…