Ugandan diary: Zimbabwe’s post-Mugabe pain is ‘good’

What you need to know:

Fall of the leader. When the leader falls as Mugabe and Gaddafi did, only a shell is left. There is nothing to mobilise the political class and resources to keep the country together.

The story out of Zimbabwe is depressing. There are things that one might have thought were impossible after a faction of the ruling Zanu-PF and the military ousted the disgraceful Robert Mugabe, which are happening.

All of last week there were protests after the Emmerson Mnangagwa government doubled fuel prices to $3.31. Petrol in Uganda currently costs on average Shs4,150 a litre. If we were Zimbabwe, we would have to fork out nearly Shs12,300! Zimbabwe’s petrol is now the most expensive in the world.

Mnangagwa, who was Mugabe’s deputy before his sacking precipitated the end of the old man’s nearly 40-year rule, took over to much cheer and celebration. He promised a new dawn, and started well. Zimbabwe was certainly a freer country after Mugabe was bundled out in November 2017.

But then came elections in July last year, and Mnangagwa and Zanu-PF did what they had done for years – they rigged them. From then on, the country returned to a downward spiral.

The State has run out of money, and the crackdown on the Opposition and protestors has been described by some as the worst in years. There are critics who are saying the Mugabe years were “better”.

However, even if all that were true, a reading of history would tell us that the real surprise is that the situation in Zimbabwe is still not 10 times worse than it was under Mugabe.

This is because no country in Africa has been ruled by a single dictator for more than 30 years, and transitioned smoothly to stability and economically prosperous democracy. It might just survive if a single authoritarian or semi-authoritarian party that changes its leaders, like CCM in Tanzania or indeed apartheid in South Africa, ruled it. But hardly any has survived unscathed the uninterrupted long rule of an Eternal Great Leader.

Thus post-Muammar Gaddafi Libya, could only end in chaos after his 41 years – even if he hadn’t been lynched by revolutionaries after being weakened by NATO bombs in 2011, and had instead died after slipping in his bath tub. And the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) inevitably has to go through the troubles it has endured after the corrupt Mobutu Sese Seko’s 32 years.

In fact, if one was coldly rational, one could argue that the suffering in Libya, DRC, and Zimbabwe is good, because if they didn’t, it would be a reward for dictatorship. People could get the idea that you could brutalise and pillage a country for 30 years without consequences. That you could then hand it over in a “democratic” transition, and it would go on to flourish.

So the pain in Zimbabwe is good, because it is a call to prevent the Mugabes and Mnangagwas of this world from coming to power in the first place, or once they do, for more to be done to place a check on them. None of this will be comfortable to Uganda, because it tells us that while the country could survive even 60 years of NRM rule, and go forward from it, it is unlikely to escape the 30 years plus of Museveni without calamity in the end.

Why does this happen? First, even a long-ruling authoritarian party that changes leadership thus renews itself, and its various leaders negotiate fresh social contracts. The uninterrupted leaders don’t do that. To rule a country, they have to hollow all other centres of power, civil society, rival parties, and the State, so that there is no opposition. This can be in the form of outright repression, or bribery.

When the leader falls as Mugabe and Gaddafi did, only a shell is left. There is nothing to mobilise the political class and resources to keep the country together. But also long authoritarian rule drives constituencies that oppose the ruler to extremes, and their disavowal of the dictator becomes in real terms secession from the national project in all but name.

The problem becomes compounded if he is removed by force of arms, rather than organised grassroots political action as happened in Kenya in 2002. When you organise, you build political skills and structures that can govern a state. This partly explains why the first years of post-1979 Uganda, after Idi Amin was ousted by a combined force of the Tanzanian and the motley of Ugandan dissident groups, were so troubled.

Years of strife (Uganda 1979-1986), or an extremely traumatic event (like the 1994 genocide), however, will so completely break a country’s spirit and back, that a society’s ability to negotiate with a new set of rulers is almost absent. A creative strongman or democrat can make hay with that opportunity.

Which is one reason I do not sneer at the Ugandan Opposition, with all its imperfections. They are doing more for our democratic future out of power, than they will if they ever get into it.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of Africa data. visualiser Africapedia.com and explainer site. Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3