Robert Mugabe.
Letter from
Harare: why Mugabe is unlikely to share Gaddafi's grisly fate
The ageing dictator's greatest enemy is not an army of rebels but
failing health.
David Smith
Guardian Mondy 21 ovtober 2011
The jacaranda trees are blooming in Harare, draping its broad avenues
with canopies of purple and green. The shops are bustling, hotels and
restaurants are often full, children are at school, young couples are walking
in the park. No sign of a revolution here.
Coming to Zimbabwe after two spells in Libya
this year, I felt like they were not merely
the length of a continent apart, but on different planets. While north Africa has been convulsed by
revolution, life in Zimbabwe in 2011 has continued to flow in a comparatively
gentle, uneventful way.
President Robert Mugabe, immovable for three decades, has little cause to be kept awake at
night by last week's chilling images of a bloody, battered and bewildered
Muammar Gaddafi pleading for his life. Could it happen here? Not likely.
Okay Machisa, director of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association, told me: "The Arab spring did not go down well with the Mugabe
regime. Jailing those activists was a way of saying we don't want people to go
on the streets and demonstrate."
But there was plenty of fear in Gaddafi's Libya too.
What's different is
that Zimbabwe offers the illusion, at least, of freedom of speech and
democracy. On street corners vendors sell independent newspapers with virulently anti-Mugabe headlines and editorials. (TV and radio
remain a different story. Some newspapers too. One ruefully exclaimed: "If
only British politicians were as brave and selfless as Robert Gabriel
Mugabe!")
Whereas Libyans had no hope of removing Gaddafi except by desperate
force, Zimbabweans can channel their efforts into a political party, the Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC).
The MDC possibly acts as a sponge, soaking up revolutionary fervour that
would otherwise find expression on the streets.
I visited the MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who has survived beatings
and electoral fraud to become prime minister in a fraught power-sharing
agreement with Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.
He lives in a relatively modest
three-bedroom house with a big, English-style garden surrounded by a high wall
with razor wire. The sound of birds and crickets fills the air. We sat in a
back office where an old campaign poster adorned the wall and Bill Clinton's
autobiography was among books on the shelves.
Does Tsvangirai envy the Arab spring? "No. It's their situation and
circumstances and conditions that dictated behaviour. One of the fundamental
things that I can say is that you cannot suppress people for ever. One thing to
learn from that is people will always cry for freedom. It is universal.
"We are in a different situation, we have different circumstances
and we have got our own way of dealing with our situation. That is why the MDC
has pursued change without bloodshed and I think we are correct."
Elections are expected in the next year or so, and with them the fear of
a return to violence and chaos.
For Mugabe seems unwilling to ever let
go of power, not least, some claim, because he fears prosecution for past
crimes under international law.
Three of the 10 longest
serving leaders have fallen this year – Ben Ali of Tunisia ruled for 23 years,
Hosni Mubarak of Egypt for 30 and the longest, Gaddafi, for nearly 42.
But all were in the Arab north. South of the Sahara, in "black
Africa", the winds of change are mere zephyrs. Still going strong are
Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea (32 years), Jose Santos of Angola
(32), Mugabe (31), Paul Biya of Cameroon (29), Yoweri Museveni of Uganda (25),
King Mswati III of Swaziland (24) and Blaise Campaoré of Burkina Faso (24).
There has been some mild turbulence for
some of them this year but nothing to frighten
the presidents' horses. Far from Gaddafi's grisly demise, Mugabe seems destined
to go quietly into that good night. His greatest enemy is not the gun-toting
revolutionary with a mobile video camera, but time.
The octogenarian president makes mysterious trips to Singapore for
medical treatment, has been photographed falling asleep at meetings and,
according to a US cable released by WikiLeaks, is suffering prostate cancer that could spread and kill him by 2013.
Gossip about his ailing health now grips Harare's bars, diplomatic
circles and international newsrooms already transfixed by 93-year-old Nelson
Mandela's pulse. I asked one analyst if all this speculation is paralysing
politics in Zimbabwe. He replied: "Mugabe's health is politics in
Zimbabwe."
Tsvangirai gave this view: "President Mugabe's health is a national
question, a national concern. Why? Because when you have a partner whose state
of health is unpredictable, and that partner holds the key to the unity of the
opponent, what is likely to be the outcome should he die is instability in the
party, which leads to instability in the country."
It was a question that arose with Saddam Hussein in Iraq and now again
with Gaddafi in Libya. Once the linchpin of dictatorship is yanked out, must
infighting and anarchy follow? Some believe that Mugabe, whose reign is as old
as independent Zimbabwe itself, is the toxic glue that holds his party and
country together.
But others point to neighbouring Zambia, where recent elections saw the president accept
defeat and a democratic transition of power.
Rupiah Banda is little known around the world and his unbloody, unspectacular
fall gained only a fraction of the coverage of Gaddafi. But it may have been
just as revolutionary in its way – and just as unnerving to that cabal of
ageing dictators.