Mugabe’s Lost Destiny

The outcome of Zimbabwe’s parliamentary and presidential elections in March took many commentators, including this newspaper, by surprise.

For many it was almost certain that President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF had done enough to steal yet another election. Instead, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won a parliamentary majority and led in the presidential vote, necessitating the June 27 run-off election.

Clearly these defeats took Mr Mugabe and his partisans by surprise. Events in the months since suggest that the ruling élite has left little to chance this time around. To secure a Mugabe victory on June 27, his loyalists have unleashed a torrent of retribution and intimidation on opposition supporters, suspected or real. Even election officials have been targeted. [Note, after the editorial was published, the MDC pulled out of the election]

The regime has visibly dispensed with any affectation of observing democratic principles. Opposition supporters have been blatantly tortured, raped and even killed. Presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC have been prevented from campaigning in any meaningful way, and even the candidate himself has been detained on different occasions. Most deplorably, food in that hungry nation is being allocated to secure votes for Mr Mugabe, whose government has even curtailed international food aid. This in particular is a crime against humanity.

The proficient ruthlessness of this repression and Mr Mugabe’s ever-increasing insularity support whispers of the presence of North Korean advisers in Zimbabwe. Their influence in Africa would be most undesirable.

And yet, no matter how much Mr Mugabe is trying to orchestrate a victory on June 27, he just cannot win. It is possible that Zimbabweans will defy Mr Mugabe’s campaign of terror and tell him that he is no longer wanted. For many voters, there is not much else to lose (of course, there is a sharp possibility of a Mugabe defeat being followed by a coup and even civil war).

But even if Mr Mugabe emerges as the “winner” of this plainly unfree and unfair election, his mandate will be tainted and invalid. Even his most deluded cheerleaders and the proponents of quiet diplomacy will have no option but to acknowledge this. Another Mugabe term would have no credibility at all. Even Pretoria surely understands now that he has to go.

How humiliating for Mr Mugabe to be in a position where he has to force himself on the people he has led for almost three decades. The likes of Mr Mugabe are not in politics for venal self-aggrandisement (a perk, but rather the porfolio of his wife Grace).

By all accounts, the austere Mr Mugabe has always seen himself as a man of destiny. He wants to leave behind a legacy for which he will be remembered well: by history books as a great leader, by his people as a father of the nation, by his peers on the continent as a liberator.

This year he has irreversibly assured that he will not be remembered for any of these qualities. History will observe Mr Mugabe as a pitiless tyrant, and his peers will recall him as a liberator turned oppressor. Zimbabweans may still acknowledge him as a father of the nation, not benign but a cruel and abusive patriarch.

Mr Mugabe is not known for his humility. Yet, if he wants one last opportunity to temper a most severe judgment of his legacy — as a despised tyrant who failed to read the signs of the times — then he must on the announcement of the election results, whichever way they go, declare his retirement and make way for a government of national unity which may liberate Zimbabwe’s from its long nightmare.