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The socialist who never was
Robert Mugabe: A life of power and violence
Stephen Chan
2003
IB Taurus, London
Reviewed by Na-iem Dollie
Sympathetic accounts of the rise and rise of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe are few and far between. The anger that he has managed to generate has left little room for debate, and even more frightening, for criticism in Zimbabwe itself. He has ruled by fear and patronage, and he has maintained his political isolationism through invoking the unresolved land question and suppressing dissent.
Stephen Chan is not a Mugabe hack. He does however attempt a reasoned look at history, politics, economics and war to develop a profile of arguably one of the most controversial leaders in Africa today. By his own admission, some of the stories that he relates, could well have been embellished over time by the storytellers – the actors and participants in the making of Zimbabwe – or indeed by Chan himself. His disarming honesty allows the academically suspicious to relax and a good read is the result.
The diplomatic lens is colourful and often anecdotal. Chan uses this lens with a measure of success and creativity as he winds his way through the many different accounts of Mugabe’s antagonists, friends, colleagues and sympathisers, and underpins his historical sweep with references and quotations from established and highly respected left-wing academic historians like Terence Ranger (Peasant Consciousness and Guerilla War in Zimbabwe, London:1985).
As a member of the Commonwealth Secretariat from 1977 to 1983 (which was instrumental in getting the principal antagonists to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the Zimbabwean crisis in 1980, and which was dubbed the Lancaster House Talks), and as a former adviser to Teurai Ropa, Zimbabwe’s first minister of youth, sport and recreation in 1980, Chan has a unique vantage point and a little more than just a distant relationship with the Zimbabwean government. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then. Chan’s book is not a "psychological portrait" because "no one has the clinical evidence" (p.xi).
"Robert Mugabe, despite his dogmatic yet charismatic behaviour in international affairs, was ultimately bad for Zimbabwe"
He does however assert that "Mugabe has been bad for Zimbabwe" and argues, sometimes convincingly, sometimes anecdotally, that this is a judgment of 20 years of reflection and analysis.
Chan outlines a political history of the party that Robert Mugabe built, its support from the Chinese Communist Party and its government, its fraternal relations with the South African liberation organisations, the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania and the African National Congress, and Mugabe’s personal friendship with Samora Machel, the first president of an independent Mozambique and whose party, Frelimo, remained steadfast in its support for the Mugabe liberation project in Zimbabwe, and whose untimely death was a blow to Zimbabwean African National Union (Zanu) consolidating its strategic role in southern Africa. The author takes a sweeping bird’s eye view, combining his own international experiences with those of colleagues and friends on the ground, to develop an argument justifying his view that Robert Mugabe, despite his liberation credentials, despite his dogmatic yet charismatic behaviour in international affairs, and despite his contribution in securing a positive outcome to the Lancaster House negotiations in 1980, was ultimately bad for Zimbabwe.
Things went awry, according to Chan, within the first decade after the successful transition to a democratic and independent Zimbabwe. Acknowledging the benefit of hindsight, Chan asserts that the telltale signs of a dictator in the making started to manifest themselves: increasing centralisation of power in his office, lack of consultation with senior members of his cabinet about the continuing civil war in Angola and Mozambique, the absorption of Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwean African People’s Union (Zapu) into Zanu structures to become Zanu-PF (Patriotic Front).
While the book lacks a detailed and no-less significant account of how Zimbabwe’s classes were formed (notwithstanding the scant references to Ranger’s majestic work cited above), it does make up in presenting the perceptions of the principal players. The essentially middle class stations of Zimbabwe’s politicians, their penchant for the high life, their frequent international trips, their subsumption into the trappings of the good life that they are emulating from their former colonial masters, and indeed their increasing distance from the people who brought them into power, could be more adequately understood if a chapter or two were to have been devoted to the actual class struggles that gave the ruling party the ammunition to entrench itself as the "party of the people". Chan’s overemphasis on electoral politics as the principal signposts of a democracy in the making, or in the case of Zimbabwe - democracy gone terribly wrong, is a skewed representation of the formation of a presidential-style of politics and a ruling elite. While Chan could quite justifiably argue that his book is not an academic treatise, the argument still holds that in order to develop a better understanding of the power arrangements in Zimbabwe, as elsewhere in the world, evolving class relations have to be addressed.
The book is an insight into the making of a despot. While this may well be correct, the issues that Mugabe has brought to the table remain unresolved: the land question, which was central to Mugabe’s war of liberation (the UK has withheld its financial compensation package for white farmers who agreed to sell their land to the state); the structural adjustment programmes insisted on by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund that had disfigured the political and economic landscape of the country in the early 1990s; the definition of governance and African democracy and whether these should be following the European and US models.
Chan refers to the eminent African Marxist, Issa Shivji (Fight My Beloved Continent, Sapes, Harare: 1992), who calls for a new democratic form that is not a one-party state (p.122). While there can be little doubt that Mugabe has to go, the danger is his institutional replacement: will the new imperialism of the US and Britain impose its dictates on the new order, will South African President Thabo Mbeki pressure Mugabe into accepting a pro-Western type democracy, will the land question stay unresolved and will ordinary Zimbabweans accept a regime change, which US President George W Bush seems to be advocating?
My guess is that unless Mugabe goes willingly, the chances of reconstruction in that beleaguered state are slim. Prolonged civil war is a real possibility and unless Mugabe’s army is adequately controlled, southern African and international pressure could further drive Mugabe into his already claustrophobic and homophobic laager. Mugabe has never been a Marxist even though he might have, at times in the 1970s and 1980s, embraced socialist ideals. The considerable distance he has travelled from human empathy, solidarity, and human rights makes a mockery of his previous allegiances. The Mugabe project in Zimbabwe is an imploding nationalism, which, if left solely to the whims of the its leader for 23 years, can be a disaster for southern Africa. Chan’s book is a valuable contribution to the growing body of literature that traces and explains the Zimbabwe crisis.
Na-iem Dollie is a journalist working for a national business daily newspaper in Johannesburg.
