Monster or hero?

By Susan Gibbs, daughter-in-law of a former Governor of Rhodesia.

Very few, black or white, genuinely mourn the death of Robert Mugabe. They may praise him as ‘an icon of Africa’s liberation’, but few will genuinely mourn his passing. Nor should they, for even by the abysmal standards of post-colonial Africa, ‘Comrade Bob’ was particularly bad.

In his first address after becoming President of Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) following the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, he surprised even his supporters by declaring in clipped English: “I urge you, whether you are black or white, to join me in a new pledge…to forget our grim past, forgive others, and forget.” Yet it was Mugabe himself who never forgot or forgave. Years ago a close friend of his said: “Mugabe hates…nobody hates like Mugabe.”

Not fully aware of the depth of this hate, nor of the spiritual battle being waged, many have searched for other answers to his murderous malevolence. The fact remains that Mugabe was no founding father of Zimbabwe: he was the appalling destroyer of the ‘Jewel of Africa’.

Mugabe’s True Colours

Mugabe in 1982In the midst of the ‘Chimurenga’ (Zimbabwe’s war of liberation from white rule begun in the 1970s by bush fighters), at a summit of post-colonial African leaders in Gabon (West Africa), crucial decisions were imminent on Zimbabwe’s future leadership. The choice was between supporting Mugabe or his arch-rival, Joshua Nkomo. Mugabe was armed and supported by China, while Nkomo was armed and supported by Russia. Mugabe won the day – but he wanted one-party rule and in 1984 Nkomo fled temporarily to England.

Soon after taking power in 1980 Mugabe showed his true colours, as a tyrant intolerant of opposition, consolidating his power in what became known as the ‘Gukurahundi massacre’ in Matabeleland. A conservative estimate concluded that 20,000 black civilians (including women and children) were slaughtered in what has been classified internationally as genocide.

As the nation plunged into decades of famine, an HIV epidemic and hyperinflation in which the central bank printed useless notes (in one night 12 zeros were wiped off the currency), the arch-proponent of pan-Africanism and Marxism sought to apportion blame for the chaos and turned on Zimbabwe’s 4,000 white farmers.

Nothing better sums up Mugabe’s madness: the farmers were among Africa’s most efficient producers of food, the backbone of the economy and essential to the country’s survival, yet he turned on them with murderous viciousness. In the six months before we left at the end of 1983, 10% of the white farmers in our district had been murdered (including, during one Easter holiday, two little girls - school friends of our son - on a neighbouring farm).

Years ago a close friend of his said: “Mugabe hates…nobody hates like Mugabe.”

Brazen Corruption

Few leaders in modern history have been more brazenly corrupt than Mugabe. As the nation sunk into impoverishment, he taunted his citizens by throwing lavish parties at which French champagne and caviar were served.

During those long years many of us kept praying and asking the Lord how he could keep getting away with it for so long. But in Zimbabwe the elderly are respected and as the only African leader who had fought in a ‘war of liberation’, Mugabe was venerated in surrounding countries. Eventually his people were so weakened that they were unable to rise up against him and ZANU, his political party.

Realising at one point that his country needed to work to feed itself, Mugabe briefly pacified white farmers by offering Denis Norman the job of Minister of Agriculture (Norman, previously a minister in Ian Smith’s government, now lives in the UK and runs a small Christian charity dedicated to helping those who suffered during the war years). But after Mandela was released in 1990 and the glory bestowed on Mugabe as the golden boy of Africa shifted southwards, Mugabe ceased trying to woo the world.

Mbare township before (left) and after (right) Operation MurambatsvinaHe sent army personnel to DRC to plunder their diamonds and rape their women, and used army brutality to pillage Zimbabwe’s own diamonds, leading to the suffering and deaths of civilians in Marange. One of his worst actions, in the middle of a very severe winter in 2005, was Operation ‘Clear out Rubbish’ (Murambatsvina) in which he bulldozed slums in Harare. This resulted in the loss of some 700,000 homes and livelihoods, with an estimated 2.4 million indirectly affected. This still haunts many in Zimbabwe today.

Learning to Forgive

Despite his fierce anti-colonialism, declared Marxism and determination to end British rule, Mugabe clung to many customs that echoed colonial rule and maintained a deep personal admiration for the Queen.¹

My father-in-law represented the Queen in his capacity of Governor of Rhodesia between 1959 and 1969 and Mugabe wrote a glowing introduction to his biography “honouring him as a man of principle and commitment”.

He later followed this up by sending the 5^th Brigade, his North Korea-trained praetorian guard, to kill our family.

We left the country, but the couple who bought our farm were murdered a few months later. We feel profoundly blessed to have escaped without having had a family tragedy. A great many of us have had to learn the true meaning of forgiveness. I remain overwhelmed and grateful for the privilege to have felt the closeness of God during those years. 

I remain overwhelmed and grateful for the privilege to have felt the closeness of God during those years.

How to Eulogise

Throughout his long reign, much of Mugabe’s corruption and depravity was unknown to the wider world, as he stifled freedom of expression. Newspapers faced censorship and a ruthless and unrelenting onslaught was mounted on journalists, media houses and individuals who dared express themselves. On one particular occasion I remember the Bulawayo Chronicle was published with an entirely blank front page.

The tragic wreck of a country Zimbabwe became remained two years after Mugabe was deposed in an army coup. Mnangagwa, who has taken over, was involved with Mugabe’s atrocities and is generally regarded as worse.

Reflecting on Mugabe’s death, Fr. William Guri (CSsR, PhD) said the following:

For me to eulogize Robert Gabriel Mugabe would be an act of great betrayal to the many people who died and whose lives have been damaged for life by his long rule.

To eulogize Mugabe for me is to capitulate and give up the struggle for human rights and social justice. It will be to celebrate the triumph of the evil over the good, the false over the true, the darkness over the light, the irrational over the rational, the inhuman over the human.

After thinking long and hard about Robert Gabriel Mugabe, I have concluded that it is alright to feel no sadness and grief. It is alright not to mourn. It is also alright not to feel guilty for not feeling sad and for not mourning. Much as he disregarded Christian values and much as he debased humanity, I shall not allow him to diminish my Christian faith nor my humanity, which in Africa we call Ubuntu.

“Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come:
As fish are caught in a cruel net,
Or birds taken in a snare,
So men are trapped by evil times
That fall unexpectedly upon them”

(Ecclesiastes 9:12)

Susan Gibbs is the daughter-in-law of the late Sir Humphrey Gibbs, former Governor of Southern Rhodesia. She is the author of Call Of The Litany Bird: Surviving The Zimbabwe Bush War (2011, Loose Chippings).

Notes

1 A devout Catholic, educated by Jesuits, Mugabe was also a deeply religious man. His mother lived with him during his early years in Government House and each morning they took communion together. As the years went by and we began to see the face of evil in his actions, many felt that the Vatican should have taken action against him. Instead (grotesquely, it was felt) he was even permitted to attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005.