Mugabe to attend Mama Mutharika's burial

Mama Mutharika will be buried on Saturday at Ndata Farm in Thyolo, about 30km from the Malawian commercial capital, Blantyre, where her husband, President Bingu wa Mutharika, comes from.

Ethel, like Mugabe, was born in Zimbabwe of Malawian parents. Her father came from Zomba, Malawi, but was in Zimbabwe as an immigrant worker.

Mugabe's father, Masuzyo Matibili, was also an immigrant worker from Malawi but because the white Native Commissioner who registered him in Mutoko when he entered Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) could not pronounce his name properly, let alone spell it, he renamed him Gabriel. He married Bona and had several children, among them, Robert.

Young Robert and some of his siblings adopted the name Mugabe, belonging to one of the helpers of the Jesuits who were setting up Kutama Mission, because their father, Masuzyo Matibili, had dumped Bona for another woman in Bulawayo.

Bingu wa Mutharika has close links with the Zimbabwean strongman, from his days in exile from the Malawian dictator, Hastings Kamuzu Banda.

Ten years Mugabe's junior, Bingu was born Brightson Webster Ryson Thom. He reverted to the family name, Mutharika, and adopted the first name, Bingu, during the 1960s when pan-Africanism was sweeping across the continent.

He mingled with Mugabe as Common Market for East and Southern Africa's secretary-general and was editor of the now defunct Southern Africa Economist magazine in Harare. He also owns a farm in Chegutu.

Last year, he named a popular highway — Midima Road — linking Limbe with his home area, Thyolo, after the Zimbabwean despot, sparking protests from Malawians who felt Mugabe did not deserve such an honour given his iron-fist rule of the southern African nation. Enraged Malawians defaced the plaque put up in Mugabe's honour during the protests.

Once one of the world's most respected statesmen because of his ability to unite warring parties in 1980, Mugabe has sunk to a ruthless dictator who is trampling on southern African nation's citizens' rights with reckless abandon.

Having embarked on a one-party state system at independence from Britain in 1980, Mugabe grudgingly adopted pluralism after challenges from some of his closest lieutenants.

First, his cousin, the late James Chikerema, teamed up with the first black chief justice in independent Zimbabwe, Enoch Dumbutshena, to form the Forum Party for Democracy, throwing Mugabe's one-party plan into disarray. The new party won a seat.

Second, former ZANU PF secretary-general, Edgar "Two Boy" Tekere, formed Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) and contested the 1990 plebiscite, shocking Mugabe by winning 20 percent of the vote. That saw the new party having two representatives in the House of Assembly.

Then came the former Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) secretary-general, Morgan Tsvangirai. His Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) contested elections in 2000. It won 58 seats of the contested 120, the closest an opposition party came to toppling the Zimbabwean strongman.

Mugabe, stunned by the result, unleashed the veterans of the independence war on hapless white commercial farmers who had openly supported the new party.

David Stevens, a Marondera farmer, was murdered in cold blood, triggering an orgy of violent farm seizures countrywide. Nearly 5 000 white farmers fled to neighbouring countries and Europe where they have contributed immensely to those countries' agricultural output.

The new farmers, most with no farming experience and without the necessary resources, soon started looting and vandalising agricultural equipment on those farms, leaving them derelict.

Once Africa's breadbasket, Zimbabwe is now a basket case and this year, the country has a one million tonne grain deficit.

Bingu is battering Malawi's maize with sugar from Zimbabwe. Only 200 000 tonnes of maize will be realised from the deal, leaving Zimbabwe with an 800 000 tonne deficit which will have to be met by expensive imports from faraway countries such as United States and Brazil.