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Kennedy Mavhumashava
He led his party to a convincing win in a free, fair and credible 31 July harmonised election and received the much-needed African endorsement.
July 31 was, indeed, a make-or-break election for President Mugabe and Zanu-PF. An adverse result would have destroyed all he has worked for in his 53-year political career, so he and his party worked for victory.
In the competitive game that politics is, if you leave the stage on a losing note, you leave no legacy. It is often the case in sport as well that people tend to remember winners only, not those who lose, regardless of how they nearly won. In short, history is a story of victors, does not record losers.
With that crushing 31 July electoral success, which culminated in his coronation in Harare, on Thursday last week, President Mugabe has secured his legacy as a liberator and post independence leader who won many personal battles and others for his people. It would have been different if the result had been otherwise.
The past 13 years have been so challenging for him, his party, Zanu-PF and country that, for some, it would have been sensible to give up. He didn’t, deciding to take on the challenges with courage.
Much of his success against those plotting against him at home and abroad is because of his political genius, the resilience and unity of his people and strong support from Sadc, African Union, Russia and China. Without diplomatic support from Africa and Asia, Zimbabwe would have been left vulnerable to Western aggression. The double veto that China and Russia had to resort to when the West pressed for UN sanctions on Harare in July 2008 stands out. Without support from his people, his genius would have counted for nothing. He would have failed to mobilise his people and foreign support to take the West on.
What started it all were the spontaneous farm occupations that began in February 2000, followed by the Government’s official launch of the fast-track land reform and redistribution programme five months later. In fact, it all started in 1999, when the Government, frustrated at the refusal by westerners to meet the commitments they made at the land donor conference a year earlier and previous pledges made at Lancaster House in 1979, took preliminary steps to compulsorily acquire then white-held farms for redistribution to landless blacks.
It attracted a disproportionately brutal response from Britain and her Anglo-Saxon allies. An angry Britain, whose kith and kin were soon to lose their farms without compensation, created a political opposition, MDC in September 1999 to work as an instrument to undermine and ultimately unseat Zanu-PF. As the farm occupations intensified, illegal sanctions were imposed to complement political pressure.
This spawned the worst economic crisis that mankind has seen in a country at peace.
Inflation ran into millions around 2007, so industry and commerce could not keep pace. Schools and hospitals closed too. We had quadrillions, quintillions, even septillions of worthless currency in our bank accounts. The wallet was replaced by the car boot or bag. Human existence was reduced to nothing. The economy was meant to “crash and burn” as MDC-T’s Eddie Cross once said.
The economic circumstances naturally complicated the politics for Zanu-PF as the incumbent; hence the party survived an electoral disaster in March 2008, thanks to a then seemingly unknown clause in the Electoral Act which says a presidential candidate must win 50 percent plus one vote to avoid a run-off.
That Zanu-PF managed to rise from being an opposition in Parliament that had to win a run-off after trailing in the presidential race in 2008 to achieve 61 percent of the presidential vote and 72 percent in parliament in only five years is an unbelievable political resurrection others can learn from.
When books of African history are re-written in future, the man who led Zimbabwe’s 16-year liberation war and the country for 33 years after Independence, with five more to run, would be mentioned in the same breath as icons like Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Ahmed Sekou Toure and a few others, if, with respect, not better. He joins that exclusive club of men who endured physical hardship, illegal sanctions and one of the most concerted propaganda campaigns ever mounted against an individual and his people. His is a unique feat because he actually survived all these to convincingly win an election some thought would be too close a call.
As he begins his seventh successive term at the helm, the President has already sealed a legacy for political survival, patriotism, selflessness, peace and non-violence and unity. In word and deed, he has taught us the virtues of progress in the social, economic and political spheres and fortitude.
If he had decided to leave when it appeared he had no chance around 2007/2008, he would have reduced himself to a dishonourable captain who leaves his ship sinking. Accepted seamanship says a captain does not abandon a stricken ship. Before he even contemplates saving himself, he makes sure everyone and everything on board are safely evacuated. In other words, a captain exists to safeguard the welfare of others and his vessel, so his is only incidental to that. By staying on, the captain has not only saved his crew, passengers and cargo and himself, but even the ship itself.
The deserved fanfare around his installation last Thursday, the choice of the venue and the enthusiastic mass of people who attended it, including six heads of state and government and at least nine former presidents upgraded the occasion to an African celebration against neo-colonialism. That is because the election that yielded the Thursday event was critical in many ways for the revolutionary party. Failure would have demoralised many African countries that continue to suffer Western subjugation but have not yet gathered enough courage to truly liberate themselves. It would have resulted in the rolling back of the land reform and indigenisation programmes, the quest for Zimbabwe to be in charge of its politics, its economy, and its territory. Therefore, while its rivals took a five-year holiday, Zanu-PF was always at work, preparing for an election that Cde Mugabe christened a “battle of our lives” and a “do-or-die affair.”
At least 270 000 blacks are now on the land, with potential for more, since the Zanu-PF government launched the revolutionary land resettlement and reform programme in 2000.
Online Reporter