Mugabe's mother-hen reaction to colonialism is to hide his failed leadership

The other day I watched the DVD of "Lincoln" with Daniel Day-Lewis as United States President Abraham Lincoln. There is a scene in the movie where the US President tell a story of how the British looked down upon the new nation, America, it former colony. The Americans' reaction to the patronising British was a far cry from the noisy mother-hen "Come back, this minute you yellow beaked coward!" after the eagle the world would expect from Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.  

In the movie Lincoln, the US President talked of how the British considered the Americans as rough and uncouth. In the story, the American Ambassador to Britain was invited to aristocrat's great estate for some function or other. At some point the Ambassador went away to use the toilet.

In the toilet he noticed the only decoration was a portrait of US First President, George Washington, hanging on the wall. The Ambassador said nothing about the portrait on his return. His British host could not resist asking if he had noticed the portrait and, if so, whether he thought it was appropriately located. The Ambassador said he had noticed the portrait and that it was appropriately located.

"What? The likeness of George Washington appropriately located in water closet!"

"Yes!" came the reply, quick as a whip. "Where it will do a lot of good! Everyone knows there is nothing like the sight of George Washington to make the Englishman shit quicker!"

If that had been the portrait of Zimbabwe's mother-hen; that would have been a diplomatic storm comparable in size and duration to The Great Red Spot hurricane of the planet Jupiter! Whereas the Americans did much, much more than turn round put-down practical joke to boomerang on the uncouth British; they went on to build one of the most vibrant, success, free and creative democracy in human history! Tyrants like Mugabe have turned post independent Zimbabwe into a total failure.

Zimbabwe has not only failed to hang on to whatever the nation inherited from the whites at independence but in three decades has destroyed it all. Life expectancy, the best qualitative and quantitative measure of a nation's standard of living and progress on the economic ladder, has plummeted from 68 years in 1980 to 34 years in 2008. It would be a lot worse if donors did not fund some critical areas. Since 2008 the western donors have paid for 98% of the country's medicines, for example.

Mugabe has used his mother-hen ranting and raving to hide his own failure as a leader. He has blamed the country's economic collapse on the "the illegal sanctions imposed on the country by the evil West's imperialists"! The economic collapse is a result of decades of the criminal waste of the country's human and material resources because of mismanagement and corruption. But once mother-hen gets going the truth is drowned by her "Come back here you yellow beaked coward!" racket!

Zimbabwe has become, sad to say, the basket-case of a failed state. The white supremacists in President Abraham Lincoln's time and colonial Rhodesia's days opposed the end of slavery and colonial rule respectively on the basis that blacks are incapable of self-government. Tyrants like Mugabe have proven the white racists right!

Mugabe will go down in history as a corrupt tyrant with a sharp tongue but no brain! He has destroyed the country's economy but worse of all he has turned back the clock because the people are fighting today for same freedom, liberty, justice and human rights and human dignity blacks, led by none other than Mugabe and his fellow black Zanu PF nationalist, fought the white colonialists for. But no sooner that the nation attained her independence and Mugabe and his Zanu PF friends assumed power, they went through a metamorphic political transformation where they seized to by one of us with totally new and surprising right – the right to rule over us all.

Mugabe and this Zanu PF ruling elite's right to rule trumped the ordinary people's freedoms, liberty, everything the nation had gone to war with the white colonialists to secure.

In the American civil war the whites from Federal Southern States were fighting for the right to OWN slaves. The whites from the Unionist Northern State were fighting to end slavery. And the blacks were fighting for their freedom from slavery and servitude. What has happened in since independence is comparable to the first group of freed slaves going one step further and conferring on themselves the right to OWN slaves too.

Mugabe has denied millions of ordinary Zimbabweans their basic human freedoms and rights including the right to a meaningful vote under the fallacious pretext that he needed to stop regime change to preserve the nation's sovereignty. The truth is he and his Zanu PF ruling elite have imposed this de facto one-party dictatorship to guarantee their right to absolute power. Their right to absolute power and to enslave and hold the rest of us in servitude; trumps all our basic human rights and freedoms including the right to life itself!

Mugabe and his cronies have murdered over 30 000 innocent Zimbabweans to establish and secure this de facto one party Zanu PF dictatorship.  

Leaders like Rugare Gumbo and VP Mujuru are bitter that they have been deposed of their ruling elite right to enslave others. The lower ranking members in the Mujuru faction who will soon learn that they have lost their right to oppress and to act with impunity they will now so powerless they will be the victim of the lawlessness  and will have nowhere to go for justice. For that is the real Zimbabwe they helped create but have gone by without them noticing it; now they will.