Go well namesake and courageous champion of pan-Africanism
I have been asked variously why I was named Robert Mugabe. Let me clarify this today. I was born on May 18, 1980, exactly one month after Zimbabwe gained her independence on April 18, 1980. My late father, Mzee Amitayo Okeny Lugwero, adored Mr Mugabe immensely.
So, to celebrate the new hope and promise that embodied Mugabe’s leadership of independent Zimbabwe, he decided to name me after this African independence struggle icon.
Robert Mugabe was born on February 21, 1924, and died on September 6 from Gleneagles Hospital in Singapore. He was a patriotic Zimbabwean revolutionary leader, who first served as prime minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987, and then as president from 1987 to 2017. He chaired the party, Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) from 1975 to 1980 and led its successor, Zanu – Patriotic Front (Zanu–PF), from 1980 to 2017.
His demise is bringing to an end the era of the leadership of ideologically aware African nationalists, who did everything within their power to free Africans from the yoke of the White man’s domination of their minds, souls and physical beings. This included African independence struggle luminaries such as Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Milton Obote, Sekou Toure, Gamal Nasser, Patrice Lumumba, Leopold Senghor, Ben Bella, Nelson Mandela, Kenneth Kaunda, Samora Machel, among others.
These leaders had a three-dimensional mission to their people. First, they strove to emancipate the African people from mental and physical servitude occasioned by slavery and colonisation. Secondly, they sought to fight poverty, ignorance and disease, and thirdly, they tried to lay a foundation for African people’s socio-economic transformation.
They worked for and in the interest of fellow compatriots. Theirs was not to assume leadership responsibilities for self-aggrandisement and primitive accumulation of wealth. Whatever mistakes (and they made many) they made, were honest mistakes that leaders make in the course of their work.
Of course, their works were disrupted by Western political and economic powers that deliberately created instability through their Black African proxies to keep African countries perpetually in turmoil so as to fleece their rich mineral wealth. That is how Patrice Lumumba of DR Congo was tragically murdered by the CIA and Belgian government officials. He was ‘guilty’ of fighting for his peoples’ interests rather than acquiescing to Western hegemony.
His murder threw Congo into perpetual instability. This opened the way for mass looting of the most precious mineral resources the world looks for today; gold, coltan, diamonds, tin, oil, among others.
That is more or less the story of Zimbabwe and Mugabe. Southern Rhodesia was a British colony, ruled by a White minority. To end this, Mugabe joined African nationalist protests calling for an independent state led by representatives of the Black indigenous majority. After making anti-colonial comments, he was convicted of sedition and imprisoned between 1964 and 1974.
On release, he fled to Mozambique, established Zanu and engaged in the Rhodesian Bush War, fighting Ian Smith’s predominantly White minority government.
Later, he took part in the peace negotiations brokered by the United Kingdom that resulted in the Lancaster House Agreement. The agreement ended the war and resulted in the 1980 general election, in which Mugabe led Zanu-PF to victory. As prime minister of the newly birthed Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s administration rapidly expanded agricultural production, healthcare and education services to meet the need of the citizens of the new independent nation.
Pursuing decolonisation as the core of his leadership mission, he emphasised the redistribution of land controlled by White farmers to landless Blacks, initially on a “willing seller–willing buyer” basis as was agreed in Lancaster. The British and the American governments had agreed to compensate the White farmers. A fund was subsequently to be set up for this purpose. The British and American governments, however, reneged on this promise.
Frustrated by the British and American governments’ lack of commitment to redress the land question, president Mugabe encouraged Black Zimbabweans to seize White-owned farms. Consequently, the British and American governments, imposed sanction after sanction on the Zimbabwean government. This severely crippled the Zimbabwean economy.
But if I may ask, which leader, especially from the Western world, would allow 20 per cent of foreigners, especially Black people, to occupy more than 80 per cent of the total land mass? Donald Trump? Boris Johnson? Emmanuel Macron? Angela Merkel? Who?
Till we meet again, go well comrade, you ran a good race.
Mr Mugabe is a member of the Alliance for National Transformation
[email protected]
Prof Kanyeihamba returns next week
