"When they write the history of my reign, sweet sister, they will say it began today." Those afforded the implicit say on the terms stated by capricious but not full-grown despot (on the macropolitical stage he so desired, or thought himself in need) and Filii Tyrannis Viserys III can certainly dictate the terms of history, such as Henry Tudor's decision to begin his reign the date before Bosworth Field and to this beam hold his foes accountable and even hang, sometimes far after they themselves have been reduced to skeleton or ashes - as whim or custom dictates. But so it is also deplorable to see tyrants grown out of their garments of power go to their graves in relative security and obscurity, and to already hear the clamour of when - now deprived of everything but that which he has been expected to lose long since - the laurels of civility were discarded and the auspices of tyranny began. The move of the Zimbabwean Armed Forces, an entity having lived through a rather unubiquitous existence throughout the charismatic authority and tactical deploy of paramilitary state terrorism and famine-as-policy of the Mugabe regime to confine, if not dethrone, the man whose name has been more synonymous with the country than the Ancient ruin city that shares its name has set a simultaneous low-key and yet groundbreaking end to its nascent thirty-seven and half year tutelage.
It is true that, in the African continent, a few strongmen (including, but by no means limited to Equatorial Guinea's cruel, efficient and seldom-bespoken tyrant Teodoro Obiang Nguema) have held court for longer than Zimbabwe's creator and alleged benefactor-turned-abusive grandfather, but few have successfully presided over such human desolation and destruction, not necessarily physical - though the astounding brutality and cynical motives of the Gukurahundi campaign, the dictatorship's christening and evoking by its very name a rain of terror and cleansing, has been sadly drowned out by the occupation and eviction of European settlers - but of a great human capital and what was once referred to as the breadbasket of a continent. With the clock of his government coming to a meeting with its burgeoning, if slightly improved life expectancy - sadly joined with the hushing of criticism in lieu of rather polite calls for an appropriate "retirement" - the question is how he is to remembered, he who broke loose the last cherry of the cake that, at his birth, was the British Empire at its prime. It could be argued, however, that "honour" (with all the sullen edges of the postcolonial regime and its faults) could as well as should rather be placed at the feet of Mr. Smith, allegedly lamented by his successor Mr. Tsvangirai as the best holder of that office but for the pigment of his skin.
When you do a deal with the devil... talk is already surmounting the difficult past of the Movement for Democratic Change in government - and in opposition - for its chairman to resume his old position and head a new Zimbabwean government. Will he walk in the footsteps of his former partner and near-bane (?) and if... how far?
Already, the excuses are being unsheltered and moved out of the closets. He who lived too long, he who sadly suffered too much before he came into his rightful place (the notion of a "rightful throne" being obnoxious even in the - entirely symbolic - absence of its second part). The mentioning of the word Gukurahundi, until it is as well recalled as Srebrenica or Ravensbrück, and a stark reminder that it was bishop Abel Muzorewa - well befitting his name - and Josiah Gumede and the United African National Council - an organisation and cause much deserving, in my view, its acronym; or at least did during those difficult months which ushered in the Lancaster House agreement - who his ZANU thugs overthrew, to wage a campaign of terror and political and moral blackmail into a re-poll that it could win at gunpoint competition, just as sure as it could expand its majority step by step after establishing it. The absurd "white" count of 28 Rhodesian Front MPs was slashed to 20 in this first defining contest of the merry 1980s, but asides from that there cannot be much said to its favour, and - arguably - plenty of famine as policy, bloody carnage and wasted human resources to its count.
I cannot but note the coincidence the death - for all purposes - of Mugabe as a phenomenon - his lifespan being, like his short-term countryman Hastings Banda, too extended for him to either resurface like Idi Amin's predesuccessor Milton Obote or, like a small but fatefully growing number of strongmen such as Charles Taylor, face justice - with the final degeneration of the being of Charles Manson and the downfall, it seems, of another Amin. Regarding Manson, what may be apparent would be the flamboyant, sociopathic unhinged psyche tending towards what used to be madness, but must be stated equally is the decisive manipulation of and conviction held by the members of the "family" (or shall I say comrades?). Indeed, is the two men had exchanged bodies five years past, I cannot see what course would have developed differently. The obstinacy and complete lack of remorse making itself painfully aware at recurrent hearings, and the ritual near-maddening thunders of haphazard condemnation of enemies since long reduced to obscurity or exile. Both flirted with the image of Hitler - though none took to his creed seriously - and saw no greater objective than the perpetuation of the self, and the imposition of fear and brutal violence to draw it out.
Too late, and to no avail. For all the teacher's experience, and undoubted rhetorical and organizational skills, the hat only befits him in the incidental presence of the hanging judge's cloth, proudly elevated on a pedestal.
The question now posed, other than the symbolic one of the old man's future - Pinochet's notion of retirement being the greatest hope which history could extend, though analogously with that case it will likely be too long before charges are raised - is how much of the regime made symbolic with one man's name, image and vision was a product and component of his own abilities in the merely Machiavellian sphere, and how likely the disintegration of "Mugabeism", however defined, now that the teacher-king has been evicted from his Katheder. Given all that has been stated, and the history of the continent in the past quarter of century - the time after the glorious and hopeful turn of 1989-91, mind you - there are several reasons to be soberly skeptical.
The attempt to re-introduce the attempt at a currency, as well as the generally reconciliatory notes from the transitional government, herald at least a short outbreak of surging support and pragmatist policy implementation. But high expectations, typically imposed, and the ballast of Chiwenga and his cronies - the real architects of this ouster, must be weighed against the traditional practice of the institution on the continent whenever it crosses the threshold into politics. The Zimbabwean military is not the Turkish one, or its Thai and Honduran counterparts in their respective "constitutional coups" against burgeoning strongmen Shinawatra and Zelaya in 2006 and 2009. The Zimbabwean military will look over its shoulders and, quite possibly, give President Mnangagwa reason to look over his in their struggle to enforce an orderly succession while not letting the system itself crumble. Not to be reduced to further corpses or pathetic old men beneath the rubble, they will have to maintain its basic foundations, at least for years to come.
Finally, the role of South Africa - so far only disgraceful on its northern neighbour (and very near constituent province) at least since the pressure of long-overdue Prime Minister Vorster for Smith to resign - and the priorities of its almost as frightening first man, but very soon to be the lowest, and likely the views of Crown Prince (if not Prince Regent) Ramaphosa, will be crucial. The possibility of constructive engagement here stands against the decade-old Chinese influence, which since the alliance between the Maoist famine state and the rebel-within-rebel cause of ZANU has expanded rapidly across the continent's face, and arguably not to its unequivocal development. The current divided - as well as divisive - policy of the American administrations (in this area much a plural at best against each other) is likely to expand this scope and leave the coup makers as well as the men and women on the street to the mercy of Beijing gerontocrats and their investor beneficiaries.
Above all, the handicapping of the opposition that once seemed so credible and hopeful - and led Mugabe into some of his worst acts, and a country to its moral and material bedrock - and relative obscurity of leaders Tsvangirai, Mutambara and Ncube makes the future of the Zimbabwean seem equally obscure, if not outrightly grim. But failure to deliver reforms, and the promise if yet cautiously implied in the call of Vox Populi, Vox Dei (a phrase I cannot elect whether to love or resent) will bear a political cost, and not being established, or trusted as he once certainly was, Mnangagwa will have to steer a careful balance between the forces that conceived his reign, for all the less than thirty-seven years it is to last, and consider his legacy before it shortly begins. Between the general outcry, sadly muted and paralysed (in no small measure in the most literal, as well as deliberate sense) since its last great seizure in 2008, and the oligarchic structures of a government that will now have to be remade to accommodate a system of orderly succession beyond the caretaker and no further ad hoc solutions. It will also accommodate the formation, in no small part, of new forces of opposition no doubt emboldened by the destiny, or substitute thereto, of this order being one of transparency, rule of law and political pluralism. While the hammer of state must be grasped firmly even in the face of the anvil, it is impossible to imagine a path back to the order of the dominant-party state between 1987 and 2000; not unless Mnangagwa wants to be known as the caretaker in every sense. One may thus hope he has learned the teacher's greatest lesson, one which has sadly replayed millennia before the far too aggrieved and ecstatic calls of the electoral campaign of 1980 (at least for those considering President Trump a violent demagogue) for one to hope for the best. The world - and Ramaphosa, Tillerson and Haley in particular - would do best to recall it once again, and leverage all pressure as to match the conserving forces of party and military which have raised, and will drum him from the start.
"The people have spoken." And yet, so recently he wore the face of the "de-spoken" as a badge. And yet, have they? The people has not been given a true say since the country came clean and clambering into the world. "The voice of the people is the voice of God" may be a slogan of empowerment, but as everything stated by the voice of God, an orphan amongst a million siblings.
Ultimately, everyone must dream - mindlessly if not - Nelson Mandela's dream of an Africa at peace with itself. But as the example of Europe, the closest individual tile to the vision of Immanuel Kant and Alexandre Kojève to a world of independent states led by peaceful cooperation and interdependent understanding, there can only be peace where the Vox Populi reigns, locally as well as on the often disillusioning national stages (the hopeless state of the latter being best managed, if not redrawn, through the former). And throughout the stages of decolonisation, the Cold War, and the elusively free and prosperous era after the cold, the same hope has gone from nascent, to persisting, to subverted in progression - such as in post-Hutu Power, post-genocide Rwanda - and sometimes, eerily, in silent boredom - such as in Ghana and Botswana. Zimbabwe has no true precedent, no tradition or historical continuity of democracy or credible representative system, much less one transcending tribal bounds and firmly instituting rule of law (two precepts which ought, or rather must be fulfilled if a healthy multi-party system is to flourish). But it does have - unerased - immense resources, and the hope that is the hour of change. Whatever President Mnangagwa may now promise, he has much to fear for himself (more so as the calls for inquiry into his involvement in past atrocities have, gracefully, reminded us of them) if the more enchanting and outward of pledges are successfully delivered, and possibly the prospect of tribal violence as well. Whatever the claims of the already disheartened clinking glasses to the demise of an old man, who won the game on all counts but - hopefully - for his legacy, there is plenty on that score before his country is truly ashes. Smith's prediction, that Rhodesia was not to see black majority rule before 2976, is laughed out as if it was as outdated as the name of the country (a name, I must admit, emitting a rather pleasant daze when spoken in Swedish), as if it were not a clock still ticking. It is time to set an end, not this year but within a credible timetable, and deliver the promise called for when black nationalists such as George Nyandoro, James Chikerema took to the streets and that old lion Harold Wilson set out majority rule as condition for an independence already long denied - and yes, I think, the hopes of Jan Hendrik Hofmeyr, Roy Welensky and Garfield Todd as well - in negating that ignominious statement through fulfilling it.
A past that has too long been buried, and seems already forgotten. But dig very shallow, and you will find silent but grave testimony of a regime, its main architect all but beyond the verdict of courts, that did not culminate in bones - as the fusion of the tragic hero story arc with the mythos of la Terreur suggest - but built on their foundation. Remember, with the vindication of this week and its plain memories in consideration, that more skeletons lie beneath the arid hills of Matabeleland than under the fields and forests outside Srebrenica. Never let the seemingly clear image of the present cloud the understanding of the past. Doubtlessly, even Hitler - onefold - on the dock had made a pathetic sight, and incongruous in juxtaposition to merely the image of atrocity.
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