MUGABE’S SELF-PERPETUATION IN OFFICE

Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean strongman, has overstayed his welcome

Before the last presidential election in Zimbabwe, the whole world had expected Mr. Robert Mugabe, 89, to announce his retirement from national politics after being the president of his country for 33 years. But the octogenarian leader would not hear any such thing as he declared his intention to run for a record 7th time. Even when hopes were high that his younger opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), who had been appointed prime minister following the last presidential election, could spring a surprise, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF went on to claim 61 percent of the votes.

The MDC has claimed that more than a million voters were prevented from casting their ballots, especially in the cities and urban areas considered to be its strongholds. The Zimbabwe Election Support Network, which had 7,000 observers around the country, has backed up these allegations that the elections were indeed manipulated by Mugabe. Expectedly, Tsvangirai has described the election results as fraudulent while Mugabe has told him to go hang if he feels aggrieved. International observers have declared the election as nothing but a sham.

Yet the African Union (AU) Observer Team led by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, as usual, said that the elections were free and fair. But given Obasanjo’s predeliction for returning “free and fair” verdicts after every election on the continent, no matter how dubious, it is high time the AU groomed a team of election monitoring experts who would not continue to parrot a monotonous and patently ridiculous verdict. There is no way an election, like the one in Zimbabwe where one man controlled all the key institutions, could be described as free and fair.

While it is pointless dwelling on the election, our main concern is on the long stay in government and in power of the Zimbabwean strongman. Mugabe brandishes his credential of having fought the Rhodesian bush wars in 1975 from his base in Mozambique. He also prides himself as having spent ten years in prison as a political prisoner between 1964 and 1974. True, he fought and was imprisoned by white minority rulers and that explains why he was seen as a hero in 1979 when he decided to contest the general election that brought him to power a year later. But rather than allow a new generation of leaders to succeed him, the man born in 1924 is still heading a country like Zimbabwe in this millennium. What new ideas can Mugabe bring to bear in a world that is growing very sophisticated and becoming a global village?

The foregoing perhaps accounts for why Mugabe has made some wrong choices. His controversial land reform policy meant to correct the inequitable land distribution created by colonial rule has only helped to bring down the economy. Mugabe’s government is also accused of corruption, involvement in the DRC war, absence of the rule of law, aside running the country on the basis of some ill-conceived policies. It is also on record that Mugabe is guilty of political intolerance, electoral fraud and gross human rights abuses such that today he is just another pariah in the international community sneaking only into the Vatican whenever there is a ceremony.

As things stand, Zimbabwe has been unable to obtain finance or credit facilities from international lenders to inject into the economy. And this is a direct consequence of a sanctions regime imposed against the country particularly by the US, and the EU due to Mugabe’s excesses. While we call on the AU to take strong actions to save the people of Zimbabwe from Mugabe's clutches, we believe that Nigeria and South Africa, especially the latter, can alter the equation if they nudge the dictator not to take his country down with him.