Zimbabwe Information Center in N

By Stanford G. Mukasa

Letter from America

November 26, 2007

“If there is a bus going to Rhodesia, I will take it.”

The news of the death of former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith will be a major public relations disaster for Mugabe and ZANUPF in two ways.

First, it will inspire, heighten and perpetuate the debate on whether life for Zimbabweans was better under Smith or Mugabe. For the majority of Zimbabweans life under Mugabe has become the worst disaster they have ever experienced in living memory. One very common expression among Zimbabweans is: “We have never experienced such life of abject misery and poverty, not even under Ian Smith”

The basic logic of the comparison runs like this.

Ian Smith deprived Zimbabweans of their human and political rights.

While black Zimbabweans were clearly treated as second class citizens the economic conditions were not as pathetic as under Mugabe.

Robert Mugabe has now almost totally deprived Zimbabweans in the opposition movement of their human and political rights.

Mugabe has also created social and economic conditions that have reduced Zimbabweans to a Stone Age existence of unprecedented proportions.

While Smith was intolerant of the Black Nationalist opposition he was largely respectful of the political rights of the white opposition. The only exceptions were relatively few whites like Garfield Todd and Bishop Donal lamont. Smith never sent armed thugs to kill jail or rape white opposition members.

The bottom line is simply that Smith created bad conditions for Zimbabweans. Mugabe made them worse.

Such a comparison in which Zimbabweans will clearly favor Smith as the lesser of two evils will deal a knock -out blow on Mugabe’s anti white rhetoric. The logic against Mugabe’s crusade against whites which precipitated the land invasions and seizure of commercial farms will point to the fact that Mugabe has unleashed on Zimbabweans more oppression, misery, suffering, hunger, economic meltdown than they ever experienced under Smith.

Secondly the death of Smith will be a reminder to Mugabe that, at the age of 84, he cannot take life for granted. Smith was 88 years old when he died. At the age of about 51 years Smith was prudent enough to give up power back in 1980. And at that relatively young age Smith had an opportunity to rebuild his tarnished image not only by cooperating in the transition to majority rule but also by leaving politics altogether. For Mugabe who is determined to die in office because he has absolutely no intention to give up power Zimbabweans and history will judge him harshly.

The news of the death of Smith was met with a somber resignation among Zimbabweans. If Mugabe were to shut his eyes and imagine how the news of his death will be received among Zimbabweans he should not be surprised that there will be all- night parties, street celebrations and a deafening sigh of relief across the entire length and breath of the country and around the world.

Judging by comments posted on the Internet many Zimbabweans acknowledge that under Smith blacks had no political rights and were subjected to a repressive regime of Smith. But when they look at life under Mugabe they are pleasantly surprised that life under Smith was not as bad as under Mugabe.

There are two interesting pictures circulating the Internet. One shows empty shelves in supermarkets in Zimbabwe today. Another shows well stocked shelves of goods and groceries during the Ian Smith time. Next is a caption which simply reads: If there is a bus going to Rhodesia I will take it.

Compare this to today’s Zimbabwe under Mugabe.

Inflation doubled to about 15,000 percent. Economists believe that the real inflation is somewhere around 40,000 percent and could reach 100,000 percent by the end of the year.

Four million Zimbabweans have fled the country. Four out of every five Zimbabweans are unemployed. It is estimated that close to 40 percent for the entire population will be in need of food aid by end of the year. The average life expectancy has fallen to 37 from around 60 years a decade ago.

The economy under Smith was in a far much better shape, considering the fact that Rhodesia at the time was under the United Nations economic sanctions! The Mugabe regime inherited at independence a sound economic and social infrastructure. Granted that the Zimbabwean population was about half what it is today and that Blacks were denied their basic rights there was a viable black middle class.

On top of this very well developed economy the Mugabe regime also inherited international goodwill in form of aid. A donors’ conference to help Zimbabwe raised millions of dollars in pledges.

Zimbabweans who grew up under Smith will remember him as a frugal man. He could be seen walking alone, no armed guards, no convoy or gunship helicopter hovering over his motorcade, no palaces or other very expensive lifestyles that characterize the Mugabe regime. Ironically Smith’s army was over 70 percent black!

The comparative analysis between Smith and Mugabe strengthens the view that African politics have for the most part been a class struggle and not a revolution. Mugabe’s ascendancy to power in 1980 was misinterpreted by the masses as a true transfer of political power to the people of Zimbabwe. The one and only time Zimbabweans ever exercised their political power was when they voted ZANUPF in power. Mugabe’s notion of democratic centrism meant that once he and ZANUPF had been voted into power they pulled the ladder to mark the end of civil and political rights for the Zimbabweans.

What happened at independence in 1980 was a handover of political power from a white elite class led by Smith to a black elite class led by Mugabe. The social, economic and political structures and legacies of colonialism remained intact. Smith’s Law and Order Maintenance Act which was used to suppress blacks was retained and strengthened into POSA an even more viciously repressive piece of legislation.

Zimbabwean masses never gained any real freedom. The terms of the so called freedom for Zimbabwe were defined by the new black ruling elite. Whatever freedom or independence Zimbabweans enjoyed in the first decade of independence was conditional on its not being a threat to the ruling elite. In other words, as the song goes, the so called freedom Zimbabweans inherited was when there was no longer anything else to give. For the new ruling elite had grabbed everything else. Zimbabweans were left with a shell and told it was independence. This was freedom without substance, a symbolism, a myth and betrayal of all the nationalist promises made to Zimbabweans during the struggle for independence.

Zimbabweans remained marginalized in the post colonial Zimbabwe just as much as they were denied their political rights in the Smith colonial era.

Between 1980 and 1990 the black and white elites shared power and the country’s wealth. But Mugabe was always suspicious of a threat from his fellow black colleagues in the coalition, especially Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU. There is reason to believe that the so called operation against the dissidents in early 1980s in which thousands of innocent civilians were killed in Matabeleland was part of a project by Mugabe to destroy Nkomo’s power base.

Mugabe only reacts viciously when he feels threatened. Whites in Zimbabwe have never historically been a threat to Mugabe since independence. The seizure of white commercial farms by Mugabe’s thugs occurred for reasons that had nothing to do with land reform or the now monotonous sing-song of recovering land that had been stolen during colonialism. Of the 6,000 white commercial farmers who lost their farms over 500,000 black farm workers were displaced and became homeless. They live destitute lives, a clear indication that the seizure of commercial farms was done for political reasons.

There is another theory that Mugabe saw what appeared to be a new coalition between the commercial farmers and the newly born and vibrant MDC. Mugabe’s advisers pointed out that the black farmers were going to be a powerful political base for the MDC. The coalition of black farm workers, commercial farmers and the urban residents into supporting the MDC, especially after Mugabe’s loss of the referendum of 2000 was a major threat that Mugabe had to do something about it.

During the Ian Smith regime this strategy for destroying the opposition if it appeared to be emerging as a powerful force was common. The banning of ZANU and ZAPU and the detention of the nationalist leadership was intended to keep any political agitation among blacks at a manageable level. But Smith knew that he needed to nurture a black middle class that would act as a buffer between the privileged white class and the masses.

The historic objectives of Smith’s and Mugabe’s rule were similar : to maintain the political, social and economic privileges of an elite class at their level and at the expense of the masses.

Mugabe was simply far more brutal than Smith.