In flowing white apostolic robes, the president of Zimbabwe, a Roman Catholic, stands at the pulpit to spread hatred.
That should come as no surprise. Robert Mugabe, once undeniably a great patriot and African darling of Western leaders, has been spewing venom from all platforms for decades.
On this occasion, though, the unreconstructed dictator has focused his bile on homosexuals, Bible-thumping across Zimbabwe’s evangelical churches, vowing to block human rights for gays in the country’s forthcoming new constitution.
“Some of the churches have very beautiful buildings, but go against the Bible,” the octogenarian, who can still deliver powerful oratory, told a large congregation of pilgrims gathered in Manicaland. “Could that be God’s church? Today the Anglican Church condones marriages between men and the same for women. We have seen some bishops blessing such marriages. That is similar to dog behaviour.”
He then added in a chuckling aside to his earlier comparison of gays to both canines and swine: “I realize that I’m reprimanding blameless dogs and pigs.”
While making clear that he has no objections to polygamy, and would fight for the right of any man to take multiple wives, Mugabe remains emphatically opposed to homosexual unions and homosexuality in general, a message that resonates favourably among a population that is overwhelmingly Christian and heavily charismatic.
“We say NO to gays and we will not listen to those advocating for the inclusion of their rights in the constitution.”
Mugabe’s views might be sincerely held. But this dog whistle to the electorate isn’t really about protecting society from the “deviance” of homosexuality. It is, more astutely, a political appeal, a bid to his presumed reactionary base as Mugabe suits up in preparation for one more tilt at the polls next year. He’s about to contest another election at the helm of Zanu-PF, despite his age: 86. The old Bush War veteran remains astonishingly immune to infirmity.
The gay thing has been useful for placement of party stalwarts, including — allegedly — members of the feared Central Intelligence Office into apostolic church administration spots, where they’ll be able to more adeptly wield influence in the next election.
Whatever works in hanging on to power, and Mugabe has tried it all, with phenomenal success and endurance: from harassment to torture, murder and mayhem, sweeping land seizures — an economic catastrophe replicated recently in an “indigenization” law requiring all big businesses to give a 51 per cent shareholding to Zimbabweans, regardless of capacity or fiscal viability — and ferocious crushing of opposition voices.
Zimbabwe may be operating under a unity government forced on Mugabe by fellow African leaders, brokered after the blood-drenched 2008 election by then-South African president Thabo Mbeki. In practice, however, Zanu-PF shares very little, and aspires to share even less, with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his Movement for Democratic Change.
The social justice party that has somehow survived all of Mugabe’s full frontal assaults is today dangerously weakened by its own internal fractions, the MDC splitting into two rumps.
It was considered a major triumph this week that Tsvangirai managed to have withdrawn from the public airwaves — and all Zimbabwe media, save for one newly launched daily paper, is overtly state-run — provocative jingles urging Zanu-PF not to relinquish power and proclaiming Mugabe as the nation’s absolute ruler.
The majority of Zimbabweans — who’ve tried repeatedly to oust Mugabe at the polls and been stymied by the Zanu-PF vote-corrupting political apparatus — were furious about the half-hourly jingles, which they rightly interpreted as hateful propaganda fanning disunity, intended primarily to boost Mugabe’s stature ahead of the 2011 elections. Even schoolchildren refused to chant the jingles at official events, as ordered.
Now, as then — fraudulent elections in 2000, 2002, 2005, 2008 — Mugabe soldiers forcefully on, contemptuous of the MDC, disdainful of a disapproving world, dismissive of sanctions even as Zimbabwe pleads for global aid, $578 million in humanitarian assistance alone asked of donors this year through the United Nations (only $162 million pledged).
Even with Zimbabwe receiving the green light last week to sell some of its stockpiled diamonds on the international market, this is a country economically free-falling, with no fiscal plan for the future.
While the stratospheric inflation of a few years back — eventually estimated in the sextillions, the government introducing $1 billion notes before switching to U.S. currency — has stabilized, this is still a country staggering through the mire of economic and social mismanagement: 80 per cent unemployment; the crucial agricultural sector decimated; once-enviable health services and educational resources in tatters; reeling under the double whammy of HIV/AIDS and recurrent cholera outbreaks; life expectancy tumbling to around 40; and taps dry in the capital because the government can’t even deliver sufficient water to its people.
This is what Mugabe’s deranged misrule has wrought from a beautiful country that was once Africa’s jewel, a beacon of black empowerment.
Increasingly, it feels like recent déjà vu all over again, back to a future of violence and political tyranny. Except now, more obviously than in the last decade when white commerce was driven away — expropriation of white-owned farms well documented by the international media — the victims of oppression and despotism are black.
MDC activists leading the campaign for a people-driven constitution have been beaten, abducted and detained. Constitutional meetings are commonly disrupted by Zanu-PF goons.
Mugabe, while calling for “national healing,” continues to thwart all Tsvangirai’s attempts at re-engaging with Europe and the West, the international community demanding Zimbabwe pick up the pace of implementing promised economic and political reforms before trade can be normalized.
“We have friends in other parts of the world,” the president sniffed, in a clear reference to China and Iran. “Zimbabwe shall recover by her wits and resources. (We) will not be saved by any country or organization, least of all Western.”
In a nation celebrating the 30th anniversary of its independence, the old Bush Warrior still rants and raves about colonialism and the exploitation of Africa a century ago.
That was the truth of Rhodesia. But this is Zimbabwe in 2010 and only the old guard — discredited, in disrepute — still dances to that tune.
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