"On my flights to get here, I have reread
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The Autumn of the Patriarch, and relished the
scene in which sharp-beaked vultures, maddened by the stink of human
carrion, tear their way through the mosquito screens of the imperial
palace, alerting the citizens in the city below to the death of the
dictator," writes Zimbabwean author Peter Godwin in his highly indicting
novel The Fear: The Last Days of Robert Mugabe.
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| Robert Mugabe |
As the title suggests, political pundits, not least Western observers
saw in the election of 2008 a despotic President Robert Mugabe meet his
waterloo in the hands of charismatic opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai. Godwin, a celebrated, scintillating, but scurrilous
journalist, returned to Zimbabwe where he was born and bred, but from
where he has been exiled, five days after the election to write an
invariable newspaper article, 'farewell to President Mugabe.'
Robert Mugabe, an admired liberation hero among Southern Africans,
came to power against the backdrop of a bloody guerilla war. His
comrades, Herbert Chitepo, ZANU National Chairman, had been
assassinated, so was Josiah Tongogara, Chief Military Commander. David
Martin and Phyllis Johnson writes in The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The
Chimurenga War, that Mugabe was a principal architect of the armed
struggle.
"Our primary task was to recruit," Mugabe observes "as I have often
put it, to preach nothing else but war" against the colonial regime.
However, after independence, fighting seemed remote; Mugabe was gentle,
and was knighted by the Queen (the knighthood has since been
striped-off).
On arrival in Zimbabwe, Godwin smells Africa's electoral
droll; the winner has not been declared; the incumbent meets party top
brass to decide the country's fate; hawks subdue doves; the President
will not concede defeat; Mugabe has 43.2 per cent votes; Tsvangirai has
47.9 per cent ; both are below the 50 per cent threshold; it's a second
run-off. It's what awaits Zimbabweans in the second run-off that lends
itself to the title's The Fear. After all, President Mugabe is not going
anywhere, and so, "The Last Days of Mugabe" must give way to "The
Martyrdom of Zimbabwe."
Godwin's eyewitness-accounts are heartrending. In the run-up to the
repeat election, ruling party, Zanu-PF's brutish marquises orchestrate a
"terror campaign of an industrial scale" to intimidate and vanquish the
opposition. Here is a grim case: "Just after leaving the police station
where they had tried to report the brutal assault of their colleague,
their vehicle was blocked by a twin-cab truck with Zanu-PF logos, driven
by a notorious security officer. The officer with his goons leaped out,
smashed the windscreen and windows of the MDC (opposition party)
pick-up, beat the two campaigners and poured paraffin over them.
The officer lit a newspaper, threw it onto the paraffin-soaked
election workers, and drove off. They staggered out of the vehicle,
running across the fields burning like balls of flame." They burned to
death as a complacent police watched. This incident preceded the 2008
terror campaign called "Operation Mavhoterapapi? - Who Did You Vote
For?"
Although MDC luminaries (Morgan Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti, Roy Bennett)
have been arrested, and jailed before, 'Operation Mavhoterapapi?'
targeted mostly junior party cadres, and rural folks who voted for MDC.
Zanu-PF invaded homes of MDC supporters, and set houses ablaze. Those
who ended in police cells died several times over from torture.
Torture
victims were ferried on wheelbarrows to hospital. "As they beat him,"
writes Godwin, "his assailants made him shout, 'Pamberi na (up with)
Robert Mugabe,' 'Pamberi ne Zanu-PF.'" When they left, Denias Dombo
"tried to stand up, teetered, and fell down, tried to stand up once more
and fell again." Sadly, "his leg was broken, he could see the jagged
shard of his left shin bone, and one arm hung limp and shattered."
Hobbling torture victims were then released back into the villages
and townships as scarecrows to frighten would-be anti-Mugabe voters.
Meanwhile, ZANU-PF war veterans continued to evict White Zimbabweans
from fecund farms, chanting "you stole our land," and dish them to
Blacks in a skewed manner. Seeing the torture victims, Tsvangirai
decided to boycott the election if that could halt the victimisation of
Zimbabweans. South Africa would broker a power-sharing deal between
Mugabe and Tsvangirai.
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