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AFRICAN HISTORIES
AND MODERNITIES
Series Editors
Toyin Falola
The University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX, USA
Matthew M. Heaton
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, VA, USA
This book series serves as a scholarly forum on African contributions to
and negotiations of diverse modernities over time and space, with a par-
ticular emphasis on historical developments. Specifically, it aims to refute
the hegemonic conception of a singular modernity, Western in origin,
spreading out to encompass the globe over the last several decades. Indeed,
rather than reinforcing conceptual boundaries or parameters, the series
instead looks to receive and respond to changing perspectives on an
important but inherently nebulous idea, deliberately creating a space in
which multiple modernities can interact, overlap, and conflict. While privi-
leging works that emphasize historical change over time, the series will
also feature scholarship that blurs the lines between the historical and the
contemporary, recognizing the ways in which our changing understand-
ings of modernity in the present have the capacity to affect the way we
think about African and global histories.
Editorial Board
Akintunde Akinyemi, Literature, University of Florida, Gainesville
Malami Buba, African Studies, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies,
Yongin, South Korea
Emmanuel Mbah, History, CUNY, College of Staten Island
Insa Nolte, History, University of Birmingham
Shadrack Wanjala Nasong’o, International Studies, Rhodes College
Samuel Oloruntoba, Political Science, TMALI, University of South Africa
Bridget Teboh, History, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
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translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
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the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
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To the memory of Joseph William Mpofu, a father, teacher and priest.
Acknowledgements
vii
Contents
References345
Index361
ix
CHAPTER 1
That the story of Robert Mugabe and his will to power will continue to
arrest the attention of the world, long after his loss of power and death,
cannot be doubted. What can be doubted is if the true meaning of Mugabe
will be established. In life and in death, in political intrigue and spectacle,
Mugabe stole the attention of the world. In his time Mugabe did not only
become one of the oldest leaders in the world but also one of the most
watched political actors. Whether he was lyrically pronouncing forgiveness
Those that saw a freedom fighter and liberator in Mugabe had confused
anti-colonialism for decoloniality and liberation. For Mugabe, as I demon-
strate in this book, colonialism and the cruelty that it visited on him and
others turned into a school that taught and produced him into a coloniser.
Instead of fighting colonial power and the colonial system in order to
replace it with liberation, Mugabe turned to admire the colonial technol-
ogy and infrastructure of power and, after independence in Zimbabwe,
reproduced and even escalated it for his own power and dominance. The
reproduction of colonial political systems and paradigms of power by black
leaders that fought colonialism is a major way in which political decoloni-
sation did not lead to liberation in the African continent. Thus, in suppos-
edly independent Zimbabwe, Joshua Nkomo (1984: 3), a freedom fighter
and opposition political leader, could mourn that the liberation movement
under Mugabe had replaced colonial rule with another form of colonial-
ism. The new colonialism of the postcolony this time was championed by
those black politicians that had fought colonial rule, and that publicly
demanded heroism and veneration for their liberation war sacrifices.
Mugabe made much political stock and capital of his personal suffering
and sacrifices in the liberation struggle, to the extent of attempting, tragi-
cally, to personalise the nation and create a family dynasty that would rule
Zimbabwe in perpetuity. Mugabe has left behind veterans of the war of
liberation and securocrats that believe that they own the country and are
entitled to its resources and power forever.
Such writers as Sue Onslow and Martin Plaut (2018: 13) simplify
Mugabe’s problem in Zimbabwe to a problem of an otherwise good leader
whose “tragedy was that he stayed in office as leader of the country and
head of his party, ZANU-PF, for far too long,” until “his achievements
had long since faded from public consciousness.” The problematic of
Mugabe’s longevity in power that Onslow and Plaut circulate is not new.
Such students of Zimbabwean history and politics as Norma Kriger (2003:
8 W. J. MPOFU
307) also hold the view that Mugabe simply became “another too long
serving African ruler.” In this book I erect and hold the observation that
it was a mistake from the start for Zimbabweans, Africa and the world to
have taken Mugabe to be anyone that was charged to deliver liberation,
peace and progress. His longevity in power only served to allow time, the
father of all truth, to unmask Mugabe as the tyrant and dictator that he
always was. Zimbabwean anti-colonialism and its anti-colonialists, exem-
plified in Mugabe, were always loaded and charged with colonial politics
and its violences.
As early in the life of independent Africa as 1963, Frantz Fanon
observed the underside and “pitfalls of national consciousness” amongst
African leaders who inherited power from colonial regimes. In its anti-
colonialism, African nationalist consciousness that drove such leaders as
Mugabe quickly degenerated, Fanon noted, into chauvinism, racism,
nativism, tribalism and xenophobia, all of which are colonial political ten-
dencies in the very first place. Politically, anti-colonial ideologies very eas-
ily returned to the same colonial tendencies of power that they set down
to fight. All because of their “intellectual laziness, and political unpre-
paredness” African post-independence political leaders such as Mugabe in
this case, Fanon (2001: 148) argues, became “these heads of government”
that “are the true traitors in Africa for they sell their country to the most
terrifying of all its enemies: stupidity.” The Gukurahundi Genocide of
1982 to 1987 in Zimbabwe happened too early in the history of the coun-
try and took too long for any discerning writer to dwell on an earlier
Mugabe that was a freedom fighter and a liberator. Mugabe took the
country, rather too quickly, from a colonial era to a genocidal moment.
The Rhodesian settler colonialism of Ian Smith, at Zimbabwe’s indepen-
dence, only led to the nativist colonialism of Mugabe.
Mugabe personified the intellectual laziness, political unpreparedness
and philosophical stupidity of the African elite that took power from colo-
nial regimes which Fanon refers to. The tribalism that led to the
Gukurahundi Genocide, the simplistic way in which land redistribution
was conducted all point to some political stupidity in Mugabe’s anti-
colonial politicking. Even as old age dogged him and fresh ideas were no
longer his property Mugabe possessed some anti-colonial entitlement to
power that approached the stupid and the ridiculous in proportion.
Notably, at some point, “addressing concerns now routinely voiced about
her husband’s advanced age, First Lady Grace Mugabe assured the nation
that if Mugabe secured another term as president, he would even be
1 THE BIRTH OF THE SYMPTOM IN THE POSTCOLONY 9
wheeled to the swearing-in ceremony if necessary” and not only that “to
ensure continuity in the event of his death, Grace had gone so far as to
assure the shocked nation that her husband would continue to serve as
president even from the confines of his tomb at the National Heroes
Acre”(Nyarota 2018: 85). Mugabe, his family and other supporters had
truly begun to live in a fool’s paradise that was insulated from the real
world, especially the world of power politics and the comity of modern
democratic nations. One of the misleading and dangerous beliefs that
Mugabe held about himself and his leadership was that he was a divine
messenger or special agent of God himself (Matyszak 2015) whose right
to rule in perpetuity was cast in stone.
If Mugabe’s political stupidity had become alarming his political denial-
ism became spectacular. He began not only to challenge but also to deny
nature itself. Delusions of his invincibility and irreplaceability in power
grew to become not only spectacular but also pathetic. Geoff Nyarota tells
only part of the spectacular and pathetic performances of Mugabe’s anti-
colonial ego: “As Mugabe continued to age in office, his growing inca-
pacitation became clear to see. He lost the ability to walk unaided; he
succumbed to extended bouts of sleep, even in public; and he was
rumoured even to have soiled himself” (Nyarota 2018: 117). All these
spectacular and pathetic farces of a denialist anti-colonial ego happened as
Mugabe publicly denied allegations of his failing health, and this with the
help of clever spokespersons and learned spin-doctors. That at the age of
ninety something that Mugabe had reached, everyone becomes officially
and clinically unwell missed Mugabe who continued to pretend to perfect
health and suitability for office.
The formations and performances of the anti-colonial ego that are
embodied in Africa’s post-independence leaders are of interest to this
book. It is the limits, fragilities and vulnerabilities of anti-colonial mindsets
and sensibilities that made anti-colonial politics incapable of being a dura-
ble alternative to colonialism. Peter Ekeh (1975) importantly explains that
the class of intellectuals and political activists in Africa that replaced colo-
nial administrators had become in itself a colonial class that shared nothing
with their own people but had begun to compete with white colonial
administrators for contempt for black people and pretensions to moder-
nity and coloniality. Anti-colonial intellectual and political sensibility
became fundamentally colonial and also racist. As colonialism seemed to
die it was actually getting born in the hearts and minds of black African
leaders that were fighting colonialism. They came to understand and know
10 W. J. MPOFU
no other politics and mode of power besides the colonial, and so did they
become more than ready to reproduce coloniality and become new black
colonisers. Colonialism swallowed and absorbed them into its universe
and they in turn swallowed it and internalised it into their own psychologi-
cal and emotional make-up; it became them and they became it. It is per-
haps for that reason that Fanon insisted that the unconscious but real
ambition of those that were oppressed by colonialism was to become new
colonial oppressors in their own right. In the Zimbabwean postcolony
Mugabe spectacularly performed the dark role of a leader who fought and
later tragically turned around to become a coloniser.
The state and country that Mugabe inherited from the Rhodesian
regime were not even in the least reformed to suit what could be experi-
enced and called independence. In his important book about “violence in
Zimbabwe” as an “institutionalised” phenomenon, Lloyd Sachikonye
(2011) describes how colonial violence structurally and psychologically
produced post-colonial violence. In violently reacting to colonial violence,
the individuals and organisations that fought the Zimbabwean liberation
struggle became part of the culture and political system of violence as an
instrument of dehumanisation. The state that Mugabe headed proved
what happens “when a state turns on its citizens” (Sachikonye 2011).
Zimbabwe as what Mbembe called the “postcolony,” specifically in refer-
ence to Cameroon, became a chaotic site of morbid political symptoms
where colonialism combined with anti-colonialism to occasion a kind of
hell on earth. Those, like Mugabe, that had fought the monstrosity of
colonialism had in a true Nietzschean sense become monsters. They had
become incapable of bringing to life a new political order of things. They
did not only maintain the colonial order of things but they also magnified
and multiplied it through a violent impunity that Horace Campbell (2003:
75) called “executive lawlessness” where Mugabe became a hooligan in
chief that permitted festivals of cruelty and perpetrated a genocide on part
of the population.
Perhaps, a clearer understanding of how anti-colonialism failed to suc-
cessfully overthrow colonialism requires another understanding of colo-
nialism that allows a view into how it co-opted its opponents and converted
them into its perpetrators. How exactly those who went out to fight colo-
nialism ended up, not becoming freedom fighters and liberators, but
symptoms of colonialism that became evidence of its continuity after inde-
pendence is important to the present book. Once again Peter Ekeh’s
understanding of colonialism is helpful. To Peter Ekeh (1983: 1) the
1 THE BIRTH OF THE SYMPTOM IN THE POSTCOLONY 11
In a way, Mugabe did not simply fool many Zimbabweans and the
world into believing in his non-existent heroism. Many fooled themselves
and Mugabe became an object of their wishful dreams, a god of their
imaginations. Michael Auret wrote an entire book that battles with the
question of how Mugabe as a “liberator” turned into a “dictator.” Indeed,
the burden of the book was to attempt a solution to the mystery:
Part of the reason for writing this book was for me to gain some understand-
ing of how so many of us so gravely misconstrued the situation in Zimbabwe
once independence had been achieved. How was it possible that so serious
an error of judgement could have been made by so many people, in the
world not only in Zimbabwe? (Auret 2009: viii)
Many black and white Zimbabweans ask themselves this same question.
Just how Mugabe wormed himself into international heroism and fooled
the world into it might be a mystery to many up to today. The present
book is only surprised that many were actually surprised that Mugabe
turned out not to be a freedom fighter or liberator of many people’s
dreams and wishes. The answer to Michael Auret’s troubling question is
not so hidden as it is found only in the next paragraph from the question
that he poses. In answering his own question, he says that his and other
white people’s “white thinking” had misled him. As whites, he notes that:
In 1980 we hoped that the black Zimbabweans would forgive and forget the
contempt in which we held them for so long, the indignities we had heaped
on them, the lack of respect we had for the culture and customs of the
people. We hoped that perhaps, against all that, they would weigh the devel-
opment, the health and education, the communication facilities and the
expertise we had brought, and find it at least pragmatic to allow us to stay,
and most of all to allow us to keep the land we had occupied over the 90
years of the existence of the colony. (Auret 2009: vii)
White thinking, white wishes and white interests that were driven by
the fear of black revenge after the sins of colonialism demanded that blacks
should forgive and forget even when no one apologised. The damages of
long years of colonialism were not undone in the postcolony. But the for-
mer colonisers post-politically felt entitled to forgiveness and the gift of
reconciliation from the black people they had exploited for decades. There
was also a very colonial and racist reasoning that was also naïve, the reason
that blacks should be grateful for the development and modernisation that
14 W. J. MPOFU
colonialism with all its evils had brought them. This rather simplistic colo-
nialist thinking argues as if it is the law of nature that people should suffer
enslavement and colonialism in order for them to develop and modernise.
Mugabe’s anti-colonial and post-political performances of the rhetoric
of reconciliation were aimed at white ears and white colonial and racist
thinking. It was a trap and a pretence that whites fell for. It was a perfor-
mance to a fearful, self-interested and wishful audience that wanted recon-
ciliation without justice after colonialism. They wanted to keep the land
and other benefits of conquest and colonialism and still benefit from black
generosity, reconciliation, peace and love. They wanted to eat twice, from
colonial Rhodesia and post-colonial Zimbabwe. They were not in awe of
Mugabe the freedom fighter and the liberator but they worshiped their
dreams and wishes of post-political reconciliation and enduring benefits
from colonialism. More than simple white political naiveté was involved
here; even mean white racist selfishness was involved in elevating Mugabe
to a hero. For his own personal political interests, Mugabe performed
mesmerising rhetoric of reconciliation. Some whites did not love and fol-
low Mugabe the hero; they loved and followed their fears and interests, as
privileged beneficiaries of colonialism and anti-colonialism. Mugabe
became a true white mistake that fed on white political fears and interests;
first he promised them paradisal forgiveness and reconciliation and later,
during the Fast Track Land Reform Programme, he unleashed on them
diabolic violence. Trusting Mugabe with heroism and unbridled power
became a post-political game that was bound to end very badly. White
thinking and white expectations did not help to illuminate but worked to
fog the real Mugabe, a power monger.
Michael Auret was not an everyday white Zimbabwean or a racist and a
bigot. He was a respected human rights activist and trusted Catholic mis-
sionary. His thoughts and words are weighty and meaningful. As he con-
fesses himself, his words represent well-meaning but true and selfish
“white thinking” and wishes about the Zimbabwean postcolony. A reflec-
tion of how black Zimbabweans were also taken in by Mugabe’s preten-
sions to heroism is found in the writing of Trevor Ncube, a prominent
publisher in the Zimbabwean and South African independent media. What
troubles Trevor Ncube (2009: ix) is that “from a liberation war hero,
Robert Mugabe has effectively transformed himself into one of the most
despicable dictators Africa has ever known, Mugabe has so tarnished his
legacy that history will certainly judge him harshly.” The mistake that
Ncube and other blacks made was ever to see a liberation hero in Mugabe.
1 THE BIRTH OF THE SYMPTOM IN THE POSTCOLONY 15
Just like Mike Auret, I was taken in by Mugabe. In fact, I can confess that
Robert Mugabe used to be my hero. At University, when I was vice-president
of the Students Representative Council, I remember how proud I was when
he came to visit us. I lined up to shake his hand in the Senior Common
Room, and it was a moment I cherished. (Ncube 2009: xi)
The Mugabe who mesmerised Ncube was not a person of reality but an
artefact of performance and a figment of Ncube’s good wishes. Ncube and
many others needed a hero and an impersonator of a hero took the place;
it became a black and white mistake to take a stage character for a person.
Actors, be it in the movies, on the theatre stage or in the political arena
cannot be solely blamed for circulating falsehoods but spectators who take
16 W. J. MPOFU
figs for facts and receive fiction as history are responsible and must be
accountable. Partly, populations and the political followership became
gullible and accepted personas for persons. Mugabe the hero was a per-
sona. Behind the persona hid a tyrant that was bidding time to explode
into a true monstrosity.
How Trevor Ncube and others were taken in by Mugabe can be a story
that is rich in sadness. It was to be a true comedy of errors if it did not lead
to much death, poverty and suffering in the once promising country.
Ncube is able to relate how not only him but, in my view, the masses of
black Zimbabweans were swindled by the Mugabe act:
Black Zimbabweans needed their lives and pride back after a history of
colonial humiliation and dehumanisation. Their thirst for liberation led
them to fall for a political confidence trickster who said all the right things
and said them the right way. Mugabe, like any other good actor, had a
practiced and polished manner of speaking that is designed to capture and
sweep away audiences.
Before and during his time in power, Mugabe used the potent weapon
of oratory to construct himself as an irreplaceable spokesperson and hero.
The same weapon of oratory that he used in 1960 to recommend himself
to the leaders of the National Democratic Party and the poor masses of
Zimbabweans he continued to deploy. In many ways Mugabe spoke and
performed himself into power. Frequently he spoke himself into a trance-
like state, especially when he was berating some enemy. Petina Gappah
partly but effectively captures the rhetorical force and convincing perfor-
mance of Mugabe in speech, the theatrical delivery that bit Trevor Ncube
and many others, black and blue:
1 THE BIRTH OF THE SYMPTOM IN THE POSTCOLONY 17
Mugabe has assaulted and poisoned our national pride and psyche, and it
will take us a long time to get back to where we were in 1980. He has turned
our hope into despair. The great expectations that political freedom held out
in 1980 have been turned into a long nightmare. We have lost our pride and
dignity as a people. Our hope and dreams as a nation have been held hostage
to Mugabe’s steely determination to stay in power until he drops dead.
(Ncube 2009: xii)
as Doris Lessing (2013: 1) insists. In this part of this chapter I seek to pay
attention to Mugabe the thing itself as a type of frightened little people
that have haunted human history with tragedies and catastrophes: the
tyrants. An esteemed member of this infamous tribe of scared men is
Augusto Pinochet that, as recalled by Roger Burbach (2003), lived his
entire life in fear of unknown and nameless enemies that he believed he
had to get before they got him. In a sinister way, the tyrant carries out
advance revenge where he harms innocent people on the basis of a fear
that in future they are going to be enemies, and this has led to many mas-
sacres of the innocent in world history. The Gukurahundi Genocide for
instance, is a genocide that Mugabe committed in fear of Joshua Nkomo
and the political opposition that were popular with Zimbabweans and
were likely to win the elections in the near future; such a prospect is life
threatening to a tyrant.
Saddam Hussein, another little, terrified and terrifying little man in the
world, for instance, lived with what he believed to be the truth that he
repeated continuously “I know that there are scores of people plotting to
kill me, however I am far more clever than they are, I know they are con-
spiring to kill me before they actually start planning to do it, this enables
me to get them before they have the faintest chance of striking at me”
(Karsh and Rautsi 1991: 2), and in that way many innocent Iraqis perished
because Saddam feared they would conspire to kill him in some future,
and so was he afraid, “If I ever fall you won’t find this much (little finger)
of my body left, people will cut it to pieces,” he repeatedly sang. The fear
of defeat, punishment and powerlessness haunts the typical tyrant and
leads him to commit insane atrocities. So frequently did Mugabe threaten
to overthrow those that planned to overthrow him well before they had a
chance to even think of it (Meredith 2002a, b: 17). That tragic belief that
he can tell future conspirators and assassins in the present makes the tyrant
a dangerous person, more so if like Mugabe was, he controls militias,
police, secret security services and an army that had been naturalised into
a partisan and personal force of the president. The typical tyrant is a scared
and insane personage that is insulated from reality.
In his pursuit of real and imagined enemies Mugabe had many of his
political opponents arrested and charged with attempts to assassinate him.
A list of “opposition party leaders such as Muzorewa, Ndabaningi Sithole
and Tsvangirai were each charged with plotting to assassinate Mugabe in
1980, 1997, and 2002 respectively” (Tendi 2016: 219). Later Joice
Mujuru and Emmerson Mnangagwa were to be separately but equally
20 W. J. MPOFU
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