Kamuzu Banda – Robert Mugabe and the demise of despotism

The wisdom that comes with age does not accrue to those that use violence to gain their way. That is so because the use of violence is a last resort reaction when intellectually challenged.

Mugabe who claims he was legitimately elected Zimbabwe President on 27 June 2008 has failed to execute his so claimed electoral mandates for reasons most of us are aware of but which only him and his cheerleaders refuse to accept.

Mugabe is an illegitimate Presidential impostor in Zimbabwe since the fateful 29th day of March 2008 when he was resoundingly beaten to the post by Morgan Tsvangirai.

That is the only reason why he has not been able to announce the new government for the country. His legitimate rule in Zimbabwe ended on 29 March 2008 as a result of that electoral defeat.

He remains in office today because he is a hostage of his Zanu PF cheerleaders in the Judiciary, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and more importantly the State cum Zanu PF armed Militia that groups the Army, Police, Prisons, Central Intelligence operatives augmented by the Youth National Service Graduates and pseudo War Veterans.

His captors above are aware that they have too many crimes to answer that Mugabe has hitherto swept under the carpet that can be easily exposed if Mugabe, in whose office, most of the crimes are kept under wraps is to be allowed to leave the office to someone other than from their ranks.

Their ransom demands are what has caused Mugabe to second Patrick Chinamasa and Nicholas Goche to the SADC negotiations forum full time to ensure the required amounts are raised for him to regain his liberty.

Zimbabwe is exactly where Malawi was with a demented Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda.
Malawians are reputed for their cultural civility so often mistaken in Zimbabwe for intellectual incompetence or downright stupidity.

The respectful Malawians were so grateful for the role Banda played in liberating their country from colonial rule they “allowed” the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) to honour him with Life Presidency of their only legal political party in 1970 after it had been in power for 7 years.

Banda accepted the honour bestowed upon him by his grateful countrymen and MCP zealots and declared himself The Ngwazi (Conqueror) and Life President of Malawi then embarked on a pillaging and plundering of national economic resources for personal aggrandisement.

Traumatised ordinary Malawians were forced to seek refuge from their Life President in Zambia, then Rhodesia now Zimbabwe and South Africa.

They were humiliated into accepting labourer positions in farming, mining and heavy duty industries where heavy and dirty menial tasks were offered but which they found better rewarding and life sustaining than the violence and torture they were subjected to by Banda’s Malawi Young Pioneers (MYP) militia.

At 87years old officially but actually estimated to be 96 years, frail and tired due to advanced age Banda’s MCP sponsored one Party hegemony in Malawi was unshackled by a 1993 referendum that ushered political pluralism.

In 1994 Kamuzu Banda faced his first and last credible presidential contest and lost to Bakili Muluzi who garnered 47.39% of the valid vote ahead of Banda’s 33.61% and Chifukwa Chihana’s 19%.

When these results first became public knowledge I was bemused that 33.61% Malawians thought Banda had anything to offer them politically at 97 years that he had failed to give them over 33 years of uninterrupted tenure of office.

I also found it intriguing that 33.61% Malawians had benefited from Banda’s rule to invest their future hopes in his ability to deliver more of the same at 102 years when his term expired. If it was hoped he had anything in store they could do without for 30 years then they could well do without that for another 5 years or until his death whichever was the sooner.

I thought I had learned all about belief in legacy as a persuasion to voting patterns until Zimbabweans went to the polls in March 2008. A shocking 42.3% of them voted for an 84 year old octogenarian despot who had over the past 28 years, scripted and presided over the ruinous policies that have reduced 80% of them to paupers and vagrants.

By 27 June 2008, 85% of them were in favour of the vicious despot retaining charge of their governance.

It’s beyond conventional wisdom what they thought he still had to offer which he had kept under wraps for 28 years.

Now that they have voted him in they are bearing testimony of what he has to offer.Nothing but violence, stratospheric rises in cost of living, trumped up arrests of elected representatives and threats and more schizophrenic threats towards imaginary enemies none of them any other than Mugabe and his paranoid cabal can see.

To his credit, Kamuzu Banda conceded defeat and succumbed to old age and associated health complications in 1997 at an estimated 101 years of age.

Ironically both Mugabe and Banda’s popularity decline was first exposed by the outcome of a referendum on the Constitutionality of a One Party State within their respective countries. There are other ominous similarities between Robert Mugabe and Kamuzu Banda.

Both Banda and Mugabe are of Malawi descent and both settled in Rhodesia’s Hartley area now Chegutu. Banda was under the care of an uncle while Mugabe was reared by a lone mother after his mother was deserted by his father. Their upbringing and education was funded by missionaries.

Both stayed in South Africa Banda working menial jobs while Mugabe pursued tertiary education at Fort Hare University.

It does not end there because they have common association with Ghanaians. Mugabe’s first wife the late Sally was a Ghanaian. Banda earned some money on speaking engagements arranged by the Ghanaian educationalist, Kweyir Aggrey after his high school study grant at Wilberforce Institute, a black AME college had terminated.

Both Mugabe and Banda were, invited to lead the Liberation party wings that propelled them into the first Premiers of their respective countries namely Zanu PF and MCP respectively.

Although Banda never subjected his leadership to the electoral test, when he eventually did so in 1994 after the collapse of his one Party State hegemony, he was vanquished by a contestant with 47.39% of the valid vote ahead of his tally of 33.61%.

Mugabe who has never missed a constitutionally scheduled election to gauge his popularity but is widely believed to have rigged all the elections he contested after 1985, failed to do likewise to avoid his first official electoral defeat when he trailed Morgan Tsvangirai’s official 47.8% with 43.2% of the valid vote.

Coincidences maybe, but too close to the 1994 Malawi result to call. Whereas Banda conceded defeat and retired Mugabe conceded but demanded a runoff poll where he triggered a vicious militia campaign to coerce his re-election resulting in the leading contestant pulling out of the contest citing conditions unsuitable for holding credible elections which views were endorsed by SADC and AU observers.

Both Mugabe and Banda’s retention in leadership positions were similarly underwritten by ruthless and violent suppression of dissent within their Party formations and against opponents from other formations.

Mugabe declared himself winner of the “runoff 27 June 2008 fiasco he passed for an election” that no one other than his Party supporters and South Africa’s President Mbeki is willing to endorse by commission or omission.

It turns out that the fate of disputing losing the election by Mugabe to Tsvangirai’s 47% of the vote has the same effect on him who refused to throw in the towel as it had on Banda after losing by a similar margin and accepting defeat.

Both losers were illegitimated by the electoral processes despite Mugabe protestations where Banda conceded.

After staging his protest demonstration and being left in the ring without a contestant and referee but watched by judges he has discovered how hollow his “win” has turned out to be. Because Banda conceded Malawi moved forward whereas Zimbabwe has stagnated after the Mugabe protest.

The routine process of convening Parliament and forming a government that Mugabe has hitherto performed without reference to anyone after his numerous previous electoral “victories” has now become impossible of completion 5 months after elections were staged.

Instead Mugabe has been humiliated by having to berg former Presidential counterparts in SADC to prevail on his opponents to endorse his re-election to clear the way for his International recognition. The embarrassing and unprecedented consultations with SADC colleagues on how to form a government by a Mugabe with 28 years government leadership under his belt has not worked to his satisfaction.

Consequently he has been forced to negotiate cession of most of his powers to the person he denied space to contest the run-off he had cynically forced to be held.

His sincerity to cede real power to Tsvangirai has come under stringent examination by the seasoned MDC leader who has refused to be stampeded into signing a power sharing deal he believes is not worth the paper on which it is written.

All Mugabe wants is to trap opponents into his sphere of influence so that they will become as tainted as he is and with that they will lose the morale ground to prosecute his captors.

Mugabe maybe demented but his political treachery is now institutionalised in the hoodlums he has surrounded himself with who are fully conscious of the consequences of letting Mugabe relinquish power to anyone at the moment.

But for how long can they hold the avalanche of discontent in Zimbabwe with Mugabe’s leadership? In the past Mugabe has defied the economic and political pressure on his government to reform through a cocktail of unorthodox military interventions blatant political chicanery and bush economic policies.

Now almost all objective analysts and commentators with the benefit of hindsight have wised up to his brinkmanship and concur that turnaround is not possible with Mugabe and his Junta in charge.

The few retarded commentators that think Mugabe can legitimise himself by forcing Tsvangirai to sign a half hearted power sharing offer such as the one currently on the table and survive the current torrent of discontent against Mugabe’s leadership are nothing but political dimwits blinded by personal hatred of Morgan Tsvangirai.

Tsvangirai will not be foolishly persuaded into signing the current deal unless it has been dramatically overhauled.

Tsvangirai’s political career blossomed on 29 March 2008 and he will not allow Mugabe to and his condescending league of Sadc presidents and Zanu PF morons to alienate him from the toiling masses of Zimbabwe by offers of token powers he will not be allowed to exercise by the established Zanu PF rotten system of governance.

No amount of treachery on the part of Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Eduardo Dos Santos fronting Mugabe will hoodwink Tsvangirai at this stage. He is too conscious of the political mood in the country which informs him to withhold appending his signature to the treacherous deal thrown at him.

That is why he responded to it by saying whoever feels there is equity in the current deal must persuade Mugabe to accept role reversal with him such that powers allotted in the role envisaged for Mugabe in any transitional arrangement will become his and vice versa for Mugabe.

Mugabe went ballistic to that proposal because he knows he has not ceded anything to Tsvangirai as of now. The entire world knows that except some naive political opportunists in Zimbabwe urging Tsvangirai to plunge into the booby trapped political settlement and negotiate his way out of the mine infested political field to show his leadership acumen.

Nonsense! Tsvangirai must not tempt death. He will not survive a swim out of the trap after signing.He will not gain the respect of the Junta leaders who will peddle that he is the coward they have always sold him to be.

Secondly he will not be able to command the respect of his loyal supporters who were vandalised by the Junta and once he is on board they will continue acting with impunity claiming to be under his orders and leave him to no answer for that without the power to reprimand them.

Further to that promised aid will not materialise until such time he demonstrates he is truly in charge of affairs. The best way of demonstrating control is to purge the system of the errand and corrupt gate keepers Mugabe has been shielding for decades while they siphoned and pillaged the fiscus.

Now Mugabe threatens to form a government that will exclude Tsvangirai and make a difference. We dare him do that and hasten his departure at the behest of his disenchanted cheer leaders.

Since when has Mugabe learned to appoint the Cabinet through Newspaper threats? If he is as legitimate as he and his Party claims and he is sure he will turn around the country’s fortunes why does he not just look at the Electoral Act and the Constitution and proceed accordingly.

With the legal brains of Chinamasa, Mangwana, Mnangagwa and all the compromised Judges why does he need to sound the nation or whoever out about his actions?

A people’s project will not succumb to the whims of a few thugs, mugs, political despots, murderers, thieves, rapists and parasites dependent on Robert Mugabe. Like Kamuzu Banda, Mugabe will be history and those that feed from his blood dripping hands will be brought to book.

The time for them to abandon the murderous ways they have been conscripted into by Mugabe and gain sympathy from their victims is now and not after Mugabe is no more.

After all those that continue to prop him are self proclaimed courageous heroes of our Colonial Liberation struggle or are they not what they claim to be when it comes to Mugabe and or Tsvangirai.