“Of the dead, say nothing but good.” So goes the old saying, and it appears more than a few Saint Lucians took this to heart at last week’s passing of Robert Mugabe, former president of Zimbabwe. As the news broke, the daily callers to talk radio, and the usual Facebook pundits waxed lyrical about “this great freedom fighter”. Two samples, both to Newsspin: “He was very funny, you know. I like his speeches. I didn’t really know too much about him as a leader, but you know, his speeches were good.”
“Definitely a freedom fighter. I followed him very closely during the struggle for African Liberation. He was a well educated man; one of the best leaders in terms of education. Do you know what I mean?” It is passing strange how being “educated” seems for many the ultimate measure of the competence of a nation’s leader, while it simultaneously absolves them of any blame over their horrible decisions.
Take the numerous atrocities Mugabe committed during his reign. Those were nowhere near the tongues and fingertips of his posthumous Lucian worshippers. But as Stuart Doran points out in a London Guardian piece, the ultimate responsibility for the Gukurahundi massacre of the Ndebele people, in 1980s Zimbabwe, (with over 20,000 civilians killed), lies at the feet of this so-called freedom fighter. In 2015, Doran, a historian and author of the book Kingdom, Power Glory— Mugabe, Zanu and the Quest for Supremacy, 1960–1987 wrote: “No one has accepted the blame for the violence, but the recent release of historical documents has shed new light on those responsible . . . These papers, augmented by my investigations and the testimony of Zimbabwean witnesses, appear to substantiate what survivors and scholars have always suspected: Mugabe, then prime minister, was the prime architect of well-planned and systematically executed mass killings.”
The atrocities did not end there. Per this BBC News report: “In Zimbabwe, thousands of white farmers were forced from their farms, sometimes violently, between 2000 and 2001 under a government programme of land reform. The seizures were blamed for destroying Zimbabwe’s economy, and ruined relations with the West.”
One local armchair pundit cited Mugabe’s disastrous land reform of the early 2000s. “What I realize is most of these African leaders have an anti-white sentiment. Mugabe had that in him too; but the international community, I find they were a little bit harsh on him because of his stance. Taking lands from the white people and giving it to the blacks. The sanctions really came down hard on Zimbabwe for that.”
It is, of course, not atypical of us Saint Lucians to blame our shortcomings on that ultimate “white bogeyman”. What Zimbabwe’s former Second Vice President said of the massacre of the Ndebele is reflective of this: “I have always said the post-independence Gukurahundi was a conspiracy of the West.”
Rewritten history has already begun to absolve Robert Mugabe. But all is not lost. One Saint Lucian offered this observation: “Mugabe was a villain, man. Do you know the thing dictators have in common? The people loved them. When they started out they were loved by the masses. All the dictators were loved by the masses. All of them! But they get arrogant, just like Kenny Anthony.”
Hopefully, not the Kenny Anthony we know so well!
-–DN
