The week-long political stalemate in Zimbabwe finally cleared yesterday with the resignation of President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled the country first as prime minister and later as president since its independence from British colonial/White settler rule in 1980. Much pressure was brought to bear on Mugabe since last week to end his 37 year rule. The Zimbabwe Defence Forces staged a coup and placed him and his wife, Grace under house arrest. Huge street demonstrations for him to go added more pressure. Last Sunday the central committee of the ruling ZANU-PF party sacked him as party leader.
Still, Mugabe refused all entreaties from party leaders and military commanders until the very last minute. He ignored a deadline by ZANU-PF for him to resign or face impeachment by parliament, which the party dominates. Yesterday, soon after impeachment proceedings began in parliament, its speaker Jacob Mudenda read a letter from Mugabe announcing his resignation. In the letter, Mugabe said his decision to resign was voluntary and that he had made it to allow a smooth transition of power. MPs roared with approval and within minutes, tens of thousands of Zimbabweans were celebrating Mugabe’s downfall in the streets of Harare and other cities.
That the 93 year-old veteran ruler’s resignation elicited wild jubilation in the country was a stunning turnaround for a man who ranks among Africa’s most famous and most heroic nationalists, freedom fighters and anti-imperialist warriors. Since the 1960s when he received guerrilla training in China and with Chinese military support, Mugabe has been the leader of the Zimbabwe Africa National Union [ZANU] and commander in chief of its armed wing, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, ZANLA. From its bases in Mozambique, ZANLA waged a bitter armed struggle against the illegal White minority settler government of Ian Smith. At the same time the Zimbabwe Africa Peoples Union [ZAPU] led by Joshua Nkomo and its military wing, Zimbabwe Peoples Revolutionary Army [ZIPRA] also waged a deadly guerrilla war against Ian Smith from its bases in Zambia.
In 1978 when Ian Smith reached a so-called “internal settlement” with black opposition leaders Bishop Abel Muzorewa and Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, ZANU and ZAPU steadfastly refused to take part in the talks and pressed on with the armed struggle. The two then formed the Patriotic Front alliance, hence the names ZANU-PF and ZAPU-PF. Their determined struggle forced Britain and the United States to arrange the Lancaster House talks in London in 1979 which led to Zimbabwe’s real independence in March 1980. Mugabe won the independence elections and has been ruling the country since then, until yesterday.
The slow fall of Robert Mugabe since last week’s military intervention was greeted with smug satisfaction in Western capitals. None of the Western powers protested the military incursion into governance as they are wont to do in other parts of the world. That is because Robert Mugabe has been a thorn in the flesh of imperialism in words and in deeds for more than six decades. That the people of Zimbabwe also celebrated his downfall yesterday should not at all be mistaken for a vindication of imperialist machinations over the years to bring down Robert Mugabe.
The truth is that Mugabe made many mistakes during his long rule. On top of his nationalist, patriotic and anti-imperialist virtues, Mugabe had a very authoritarian streak, was intolerant of opposition, brutally suppressed ZAPU, exiled many opponents and he run down the country’s once very strong economy by mismanaging the land redistribution program, which led to the collapse of its once extremely successful commercial agriculture.
The biggest of all Mugabe blunders was his determination to rule until death, which two weeks ago was compounded by the sacking of his deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa in order to pave the way for his wife Grace Mugabe to succeed him. That act precipitated his downfall, but it will not remove Robert Gabriel Mugabe from the pantheon of Africa’s greatest anti-colonial, nationalist and anti-imperialist heroes.
