It's time for Mr Mugabe to go
Thursday, June 05, 2003
POEOPLE who actively supported the southern African struggles against institutionalised racism and white minority rule are likely to be deeply hurt, ashamed even, by the antics of Mr Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe.
Jamaicans, and West Indians in general, would be counted among these people. Race and history would have made people of this region empathetic with the peoples not only of Zimbabwe but all of southern Africa, including South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique.
But as we have explained before, there developed a qualitative difference in our perception of Jamaica's involvement in the Zimbabwean struggle and the country's final move to independence.
At the 1979 Commonwealth Summit, Michael Manley, then the Jamaican prime minister, was one of those who pressed Britain's Margaret Thatcher into accepting a Zimbabwean independence, leading to the end of the 'bush war' and Mr Mugabe's eventual ascension to power. Bob Marley, the Jamaican reggae singer, whose revolutionary music was inspirational in resisting white rule, was specially invited to perform at Zimbabwe's independence celebrations. It was to be among Marley's last major performances before his death, and served to further cement the Jamaica/Zimbabwe relationship beyond what happens at the formal state level.
Zimbabwe began its independence with much promise, not withstanding a few lop-sided arrangements to appease the old order. But we had all assumed that Robert Mugabe stood on a higher moral plane. History and circumstance had ordained it so.
As it has turned out Mr Mugabe, the bush war hero, has feet of clay. But worse, he has become that much caricatured leader in the post-colonial period. He represents a political process encased in venality, while the society crumbles around him.
Mr Mugabe has attempted to mask his final, and absolute, corruption by playing to the legitimate issue of landlessness among the country's black majority population. It is a fact that a handful of white farmers controls over 90 per cent of the country's best land, the spoils of colonial conquest. It is beyond debate that reform is necessary.
But in Mr Mugabe's hands the land issue is chimera. It is not a genuine attempt of a modern, tolerant and democratic society to come to grips with a real problem. Rather, Robert Mugabe has found a theme which he can milk linguistically for the perpetuation of his own power.
He in the process, declared a willingness to trample the rights of his people and undermine institutions, most of which survive as mere facades.
Mr Mugabe does more. He marches on his people's future and on our own dreams. He diminishes Zimbabwe as well as those who also felt that the struggle was also theirs. He weakens the Diaspora.
Mr Patterson, our own prime minister, should rally his Caribbean Community counterparts for our region to publicly tell Mr Mugabe that he has become not only a liability to his own people, but a public embarrassment. They must advise him that it is time to go.
Except for the views expressed in the columns above, the articles published on this page do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the Jamaica Observer.
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