If you have been catching news tidbits here and there on the Zimbabwe stolen election and the apparently crazy behavior of 84 year old strongman Robert Mugabe, you have probably been wondering what the heck brought this on. I spotted an intriguing article this morning on MSNBC entitled "Mugabe thinks he has been chosen" that explains quite a bit.
Robert Mugabe was of course originally a black revolutionary against the all white regime of Rhodesia. After a long struggle and a guerilla war, he eventually got his way 28 years ago and became the first modern black ruler of a predominantly black nation. He had to spend 11 years in jail before the freedom finally arrived.
The unfortunate thing is, that was then and this is now, and Mugabe is living in the past. Unlike the giant of African politics, Nelson Mandela, Mugabe was never able to let go of any past hurts. Mugabe's childhood and the long struggle against white rule have burdened him. He has never forgiven the father who abandoned him when he was 10 to the women in the family - a heathen grandmother and a mother who converted to Catholicism and proudly gave her son into the care of Jesuit priests at nearby Kutama mission. There, Mugabe found a surrogate father in Anglo-Irish headmaster the Rev. Jerome O'Hea. He apparently really believes that it is God's will for him to run Zimbabwe, and appears determined to die in office however long it takes, even though he has run his nation totally into the ground. A once thriving economy has collapsed, and life expectancies there are suddenly the SHORTEST of any nation on our planet- only 34 years for women. Yet Mugabe still depicts himself as a liberator fighting to keep Zimbabwe from white imperialists. He calls whites vermin and mongrels- and yet he was apparently deeply hurt this past week when Queen Elizabeth II stripped him of the honorary knighthood bestowed in 1994 when he was an anti-colonial hero. It is more of a love-hate thing than a pure hatred- Mugabe to this day models himself on a British gentleman - dark lounge suits, silk ties and handkerchiefs, a fondness for tea and cricket.
When you study the psychological roots of Zimbabwe's current descent into utter chaos, you realize that bad choices beget bad choices. The all-white states of South Africa and Zimbabwe were a disaster, and disasters tend to grind on instead of suddenly changing into happy success stories. What we sow is what we will reap. South Africa made the good choices to finally let the past bury the past and undergo an agonizing voyage to Reconciliation. Zimbabwe, in the unfortunate case of Robert Mugabe, took a different road. May we all learn from his mistake. Political leadership is about that mysterious land, the future. The past is dead.
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Comments: 8
Mbecki of South Africa as a weak leader ( who was not much engaged in the armed struggle), cooperating with the colonialist powers. His paranoia is clear and he must go. But many Africans see that they are under attack by the great powers. Mandela has condemned Mugabe, but he sees the inteference of the West throughout Africa.
My perception of God though, is that S/He has no special desires for us, does NOT choose for us or between us, leaves that all up to us as our "free agency" (freedom of choice) ... but of course there are an infinite number of gods (note lower case g) available for people to relate to (God allows the gods to help mankind have what he wants, be that for good or ill) ... Jesus being one of them and Satan effectively being another ... and that is, as I see it, one of the greatest problems with Christianity, how "they" perceive, and thus relate to, God ...
It is evident that Mugabe is dealing with "a" god, in his mind, NOT "THE" God.
That may well be eventually seen as a good lesson of what NOT to do for mankind, especially as compared to South Africa's "reconciliation" ... which is about balance rather than extremism.