Mugabe Über Alles

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Essay

Struggle for Southern Africa

Robert G. Mugabe

The Republic of South Africa is both engaging in a 'vicious and ugly' civil war and 'waging an undeclared war against its neighbours'. After reviewing RSA intervention in Mozambique and Angola, and arguing that the front-line states are opposed to apartheid, not to whites or to Western interests, calls for US policy-makers to match words with deeds, namely by backing a policy of economic sanctions. Then prime minister, now president of Zimbabwe.

Essay

Africa's Mess, Mugabe's Mayhem

Robert I. Rotberg

Venal leaders are the curse of Africa, and Robert Mugabe is a walking reminder of how much damage they can do. No mere thug like Idi Amin, the gifted Mugabe created modern Zimbabwe and then robbed it of its enormous potential. The comparatively well-run, well-off country that he inherited is now a corruption-riddled, autocratic mess sent into economic free fall by its kleptomaniacal president's whims -- including tampering with elections, sending troops to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and hiring goons to invade white-owned farms. An indulgent world contributed to Mugabe's sense of invincibility. Instead, he and his ilk should be ostracized.

Capsule Review

From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe: The Politics of Transition

Jennifer Seymour Whitaker

More than a year into a supposed unity government between President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Zimbabwe continues to stagnate. There has been little unity, even less partnership, a wholesale denial of basic political and human rights, and only marginal economic improvements. Mugabe is holding tightly to the levers of power. As the MDC minister of finance, Tendai Biti, put it bluntly in February, "ZANU-PF cannot continue to urinate on us."

The unity government was born in 2009, after Mugabe finally agreed to share power under pressure from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), a regional bloc. Tsvangirai reluctantly accepted the arrangement despite having won the March 2008 parliamentary election outright -- a result that Mugabe's handpicked electoral commission refused to honor.

From the beginning, Mugabe has run roughshod over the unity compact. Although some ministries were assigned to the MDC and some to ZANU-PF, the key Home Affairs Ministry had to be shared between the two parties because Mugabe refused to relinquish control over it. Mugabe also reneged on a promise to consult Tsvangirai before appointing the head of the central bank and the attorney general. Nor has Mugabe sworn into office most of the MDC's nominees for other government posts. In an attempt to keep virtually all governmental authority in his party's hands, he has never fully constituted the Zimbabwe National Security Council, a new entity -- on which Tsvangirai has a right to sit -- that was intended to replace the powerful Joint Operations Command, a secretive body of high-ranking ZANU-PF security officials that continues to meet out of the public eye. He agreed to appoint judges in consultation with Tsvangirai but has not done so; meanwhile, he has simply ignored court judgments that have displeased him. And he continues to extract immense sums of cash from the central bank to fund his travels, his wife's travels, and the lavish spending of their entourages. (Mugabe took 66 people with him to a November 2009 United Nations meeting on hunger in Rome and another 59 to Copenhagen for the December climate summit.)