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From the Editor/Publisher
Jideofor Adibe, PhD
Zimbabwes Robert Mugabe: Villain or Unjustly Vilified
In the January/February 2006 edition of the journal, we looked at the impact of Africas multiple allegiances on Pan-Africanism, African identity, development trajectories, and unity projects. Basically we sought answers to a number of critical questions, including why multiple allegiances and how are these expressed
In this edition, we look at Zimbabwes Robert Mugabe (or Mugabe as a personification of Zimbabwe). Though Mugabe who led Zimbabwe to independence in 1980 after a bitter war of independence was for long regarded as Africas greatest reconciler, forgiving the white supremacists that had harshly maltreated him and others during the anti-colonial struggle, his regime is increasingly criticised and isolated, especially in the West. Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State for instance described his government as one of the outposts of tyranny while President Bush, in his State of the Union address, cited Zimbabwe as one of the countries targeted by the US democratization policy. In Britain, Prince Charles and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw nearly got into trouble for merely shaking his hands in public. Many Africans and African governments however do not seem to share the enthusiasm with which he is condemned in the West, and in fact, one London-based magazine, New African, voted him the third greatest African of all time (New African, August-September 2004).
So where does the truth lie in all these Is Mugabe really a hero who is merely being vilified for embarking on policies that humiliate the West or harm their interests as some Africans believe, or merely an opportunist who resorted to rightwing politics to hang on to power as his predominantly Western critics argue What are the real issues in the Zimbabwean imbroglio Put simply, is Robert Mugabe a villain or is he being unjustly vilified
Princeton N. Lyman, Director of Africa Policy Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York argues that though Mugabe began his regime with a commitment to reconciliation, the the bloom was fairly quickly off the rose as he waged a brutalizing war against the supporters of his main political rival, Joshua Nkomo, killing perhaps 20,000 in Matabeleland and when he lost a critical referendum in February 2000 on constitutional changes, amid a growing opposition, he quickly launched a land grab that in the next few years forced most white farmers off their land without compensation, and displaced thousands of black farm workers, all in the name of justice and anti-colonialism.
Lionel Beehner, staff writer at the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, gives a comparative history of land reforms and notes that while land reforms have been successful in some parts of the world, it has generally failed in sub-Saharan Africa. He argues that its failure in Zimbabwe can be seen in the fact that the country, which was once Africas bread basket, started shortly afterwards to import more than 1 million tons of grain annually while some 2 million Zimbabwean migrants poured into South Africa in search of jobs.
Franco Henwood, a volunteer Country Coordinator for Amnesty International UK, who has written extensively on the human rights situation in Zimbabwe, defends charges that the focus on the human rights situation in Zimbabwe is selective, saying that the African Unions reaction to the events in Zimbabwe so far indicates that its commitment to a new order is in word only.
Amin Y. Kamete, a Zimbabwean Research Programme Coordinator at the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden, examines the conflicts between the central government and opposition-controlled urban councils in Zimbabwe, arguing that the urbanites had good grounds for harbouring animosity towards the party that had liberated them from nearly a century of colonial rule.
We requested and obtained from the Zimbabwean government its own side of the story. In an article emailed to us via the Zimbabwean High Commission in London, the Zimbabwean Ministry of Foreign Affairs traced the roots of the crisis to the countrys political history and noted that the land question dominated the Lancaster House talks that culminated in independence in 1980 and that it was estimated that about $2 billion would be needed to properly support land reforms in the country. The government said it received only 40m between 1980 and 1996, and that though a mission sent by John Major to evaluate the position after the 40m provided under Mrs. Margaret Thatcher had been exhausted recommended that further funding be given to Zimbabwe to complete the land reform programme, when John Major lost the 1997 general election to Tony Blair, the new regime immediately repudiated all the undertakings made by the British under the Lancaster House Agreement to assist Zimbabwe with land reforms. It quotes a letter written to the Zimbabwean government on November 5 1997 by Ms Clare Short, the newly appointed Secretary of State for International Development, which reads in part:
I should make it clear that we do not accept that Britain has a special responsibility to meet the costs of land purchase in Zimbabwe. We are a new government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and, as you know, we were colonized not colonizers.
The Zimbabwean government further argues that it was left with no option but to legally designate for acquisition in 1997 nearly 1,500 white-owned farms for resettlement to landless peasants.
Norman Mlambo, a Zimbabwean Research Fellow at Africa Institute of South Africa, traces the history of the current conflicts in Zimbabwe to the brutality of the struggle for liberation. He notes that in the optimism of a new democratic dispensation, there was no accounting for the thousands of school children who perished on their way to join liberation movements in neighbouring countries no war crimes tribunal, no prosecutions for human rights violations, no truth and reconciliation process and no adequate compensation for victims on both sides of the struggle. He identifies and discusses the various issues that reinforce the politics of bitterness in Zimbabwe, showing how some of these issues mutate over time. He blames some foreign interests, especially British and some Nordic researchers for a deliberate misinterpretation of the Matabeleland crisis of the 1980s and argues that such misrepresentations fuelled political polarization between the Shona and Ndebele.
Issaka Souare, a Guinean and Contributing Editor to African Renaissance, in a review essay, questions the conclusions of the contributors to the book, Zimbabwe: Injustice and Political Reconciliation (Harare: Weaver Press, 2005) and argues that the fact that the authors were able to publish such a critical volume of the governments position by a Harare-based publisher without fear of persecution, suggests a different picture of the country than the Zimbabwe we often read about as muffling free press, and which madly sends bulldozers to demolish poor peoples houses without due regard to any legal procedure.
Feedback
Professor Helmi Sharawy, director of the Arab & African Research Centre in Cairo, Egypt, and, who was directly responsible for co-coordinating Egyptian governments relations with more than 20 African liberation movements in the 1960s and early 1970s under President Gamal Nasser of Egypt, comments on Bankie Forster Bankies article on the conflict between Pan-Africanism and Pan-Arabism at the Borderlands (African Renaissance, January/February 2006). Professor Sharawy, accuses Bankie of failing to make a clear distinction between the era of colonial anthropology and that of National Liberation and of isolating himself within the traditional limits of ethnography and by so doing, failed to study the interaction between the new global Islamism and neo liberal capitalism.
In addition to the above articles in the lead theme, we also have articles on other vital issues from a discussion of the Blood and Family Relations between Africans and Europeans in the United States to Black Portraiture in Hollywood.
Table of Contents
From the Editor/Publisher
Jideofor Adibe
Zimbabwe: The Limits of Influence
Princeton N. Lyman
Land Reform Revisited
Lionel Beehner
Zimbabwe, the African Union and Human Rights:
A New Era Born or Just Stillborn
Franco Henwood
More Than Urban Local Governance
Warring Over Zimbabwes Fading Cities
Amin Y Kamete
The Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zimbabwe
The Politics of Bitterness:
Understanding the Zimbabwean Crisis 1980 2005
Norman Mlambo
Book Review: Zimbabwean Crisis:
Towards a More Objective Analysis of the Situation
Reviewer: Issaka K. Souar
Community Development in Oil Producing Areas of Nigeria:
Inadequacies of Current Efforts and Essential Elements of a
Proposed Comprehensive Strategy
Chinua Akukwe
The Anglophone Problem in Cameroon:
A Conflict Resolution Perspective
Cage Banseka
The Blood and Family Relations between Africans and
Europeans in the United States
Amadu Jacky Kaba
Black Portraiture in Hollywood(Part 1)
Richard Robinson
Tatus Swahili Translator:
In Memory of Freddy Ernesto Ilunga Ilanga Yatii
Katrin Hansing
Comment on Bankie Fosrter Bankies
The Afro-Arab Bordelands: A Conflict Zone in Africa
Helmi Sharawy