Why President Mugabe is the darling of Zimbabweans and the hero of Africa

President Robert Mugabe has been on the receiving end of all manner of criticism from the West and its local minions, the opposition. He has been cast in the most negative of terms because of his principled position against imperialism. Despite this unrelenting onslaught, he remains the darling of Zimbabweans and a hero of Africa.

In 2000, he crossed the Rubicon by embarking on the Land Reform Programme (LRP), which was aimed at achieving equity in this valuable resource that was the main raison d'être of the protracted liberation struggle for which 60 000 people lost their lives. This marked the beginning of a period of unjustified vilification by the West for allegedly violating the property rights of the 4 000 who owned most of the prime land in Zimbabwe, while no thought was spared for the millions of Zimbabweans who were crowded by the Rhodesian regime in infertile, sandy and inhabitable pieces of land such as the tsetse fly-infested in areas such as Gokwe. The attacks against the person of President Mugabe were as though he never gave a chance to Britain to honour its 1979 Lancaster House promise to provide financial resources to compensate the white farmers. The British refused to compensate their kith and kin leaving Zimbabwe with no choice except to re-distribute land to rectify the colonial imbalances of the past.
 
Despite the attacks, many Zimbabweans today enjoy the benefits of the exercise. Over 300 000 Zimbabwean families now own their own pieces of land. They are now masters of their own destinies. Most of them have been transformed from poor farm workers and peasant farmers eking out a living from tired pieces of land into successful farmers. Zimbabwe is known as one of the global players in tobacco farming and this key sector is now being driven by over 80 000 black farmers, who are growing the golden leaf and contributing meaningfully to their country's economy. The land re-distribution programme has empowered the hitherto rural dwellers into key players in their country's economy.

President Robert Mugabe's economic empowerment drive was not only limited to the land reform. In the past mines were owned by conglomerates such as the Anglo American Corporations of this world with black people being condemned and consigned to being mere sources of labour.
 
Zimbabwe has blazed a trail in changing this scenario through empowering her people. Today local people, who were allocated mining claims are contributing more to Fidelity Printers and Refiners, Government's authorised gold buyer, than their corporate counterparts.

While most Africans remain poor despite sitting on vast mineral deposits, most Zimbabweans have benefitted from Community Share Ownership Schemes (CSOT) which saw transnational mining firms contributing financial resources to the needs of the communities they operate in. This arrangement has also enabled the communities to own part of the companies and to improve their lives through investing in infrastructure. The Mhondoro-Ngezi-Chegutu-Zvimba Community Trust members, for example, now own part of the second largest chicken company in Zimbabwe, Sable Chickens.

A teacher by profession, President Mugabe has always been very passionate about education. This saw him driving a programme to spread education throughout the country. At independence most rural districts had a few mission secondary schools, creating bottlenecks for the few places which were available. Today secondary schools are all over the country. Zimbabwe had one university in 1980 and, under President Mugabe's watch, the country now boasts of 20 universities, comprising 14 state universities and 6 private ones. This explains the country's position as the most educated nation in Africa, which it has maintained over the years despite labouring under the illegal economic sanctions imposed upon it by the West.

Wherever President Mugabe travels in Africa, people egg him on to continue fighting the colonial masters who are refusing to loosen their grip on their former colonies despite having attained independence decades ago. In 2003, President Mugabe pulled Zimbabwe out of the Commonwealth much to the chagrin of Britain, which sought to extend its hegemony over Zimbabwe using such post-colonial bodies that are meant to continue siphoning the country's mineral wealth at the expense of its people.

The majority of Africans admire and revere President Mugabe because, unlike other African leaders, he has told Western leaders in their face that they are hypocritical and use double standards when dealing with Africans. He has pointed out their duplicity in the way the International Criminal Court has pursued African leaders such as the Sudanese President, Omar al Bashir and the Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, while, the former British Prime minister, Tony Blair walks this world scot-free despite misleading his country into invading Iraq on the basis of blatant lies that Saddam Hussein harboured weapons of mass distraction. President Mugabe has also told the West in its face of how it and the United Nations (UN) treat African countries as second class global citizens. He has told them of the need for the reform of the global body's Security Council to include African countries.

It is for these reasons that the West shudders and quakes in its boots when he lands on its shores. It is because of his unprincipled stance that the West hires Zimbabweans in the Diaspora such as Savanna Madamombe to demonstrate against him. Year in and year out they have set their minions to demonstrate against him during the UN General Assembly but this has not changed anything because President Mugabe's roots and support are in Zimbabwe and Africa and not in New York.