Mugabe the tyrant proves we are cowards on a continental scale

He died, vindicated, last year. Barely anyone in Zimbabwe has a job. Inflation, at 100,000%, is so high that wages would need to be raised hourly to make turning up worthwhile

TODAY, the state buries Patrick Hillery. If he was a reluctant President, he had been an energetic minister, holding numerous offices over a 14-year period. As Minister of External Affairs — renamed Foreign Affairs in 1971 — he had his work cut out for him. Not only was there the outbreak of the Troubles to contend with, but Ireland’s accession to the EEC to negotiate as well.

However, another issue 5,000 miles away was to be a constant irritant for Hillery and his officials at Iveagh House throughout his years of service there: Rhodesia.

When one considers that there are only 30,000 Europeans left in Zimbabwe today, it is remarkable to think that more than 8,000 Irish passport-holders lived there during the 15-year life of Ian Smith’s racist regime.

The white community was much larger then, of course — although never more than 5% of the total population. Irish passports were much in demand. Britain had imposed travel restrictions, refusing entry to those holding the green so-called ‘Republic of Rhodesia’ documents.

The Irish passport office did a brisk trade with anyone who could point to an Irish grandparent. The letter of the UN sanctions was observed — no passports were issued to those accused of close involvement with the Rhodesian Front government — but Hillery still had to defend Government policy from attacks by Garret FitzGerald and Noel Browne.

Today, of course, a few Rhodies — whites who left Zimbabwe after majority rule — reside in Ireland permanently. But they are vastly outnumbered by black Zimbabweans — many supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change, others members of the oppressed Ndebele ethnic group — who have fled persecution by the Mugabe regime. Those who could not afford to return to vote in last month’s election — either for financial reasons or for fear of their lives — must look despairingly at the farcical situation now.

Back in the 1970s, Garret FitzGerald urged Hillery to give the British government advice on the means of testing the acceptability of proposals from Edward Heath to end the stalemate created by Rhodesian UDI (Ian Smith would not allow a referendum of the whole population; London would not allow a whites-only poll). It was a forlorn hope: if London in 1971 was not prepared to listen to Dublin about the introduction of internment, what hope in respect of Rhodesia?

I was last in Zimbabwe in 2004. By then, the economy was in freefall and Mugabe’s subjects were growing hungry, but he was more popular than ever. Not in Zimbabwe, mind you. But in many African capitals he was receiving standing ovations, not least at President Thabo Mbeki’s swearing-in ceremony in Cape Town.

At home, it was already clear that his ‘land-reform programme’ had not significantly reversed his unpopularity. He had already taken to bludgeoning black opponents and rigging elections. His supporters didn’t care. Mugabe was giving the whites hell. He was a hero.

One assumed this accounted for the Mbeki administration’s reluctance to criticise him in public. We were told that the situation in Zimbabwe was delicate and that ‘quiet diplomacy’ offered the best shot at staving off anarchy. For a while this seemed plausible. In time, though, it became clear that quiet diplomacy was mostly a cover for covert support. South Africa thwarted attempts to place his atrocities on the agenda at the UN Security Council and the UN Human Rights Committee.

Having been elected amidst high hopes, Mugabe has gradually made the impossible possible: restoring Ian Smith’s historical reputation. He died, vindicated, last year. Barely anyone in Zimbabwe has a job. Inflation, at 100,000%, is so high that wages would need to be raised hourly to make turning up worthwhile. Most don’t bother. The unluckiest go hungry. All because of one man.

Colonialism might have left a wretched legacy, but next-door Botswana thrives as Zimbabwe grinds to a halt. Mugabe fears international justice — he has the blood of thousands of Ndebele on his hands — but true justice would see him indicted for millions more deaths caused by his misrule.

As he enters the 29th year of his rule, Mugabe is not only sucking the life from his country but also holding back an entire continent. In his constant railing about colonialism, he keeps the country and the whole of Africa looking backward.

Mugabe is one of the last leaders of a liberation struggle to hold power in Africa and he regularly invokes those credentials. He appears on Zimbabwean television in his fatigues even though it has been nearly three decades since his movement put down its guns. In any case, the Jesuit-educated intellectual with eight university degrees never carried one himself.

With his incessant reminders to his people of how much he sacrificed for them, he insists on a now outdated reverence for his generation. Yet more than half of the population of sub-Saharan Africa was born after the last of the independence wars. That language is lost on them. South Africa’s Nelson Mandela knew it and left office after one term nearly a decade ago. Mugabe’s rhetoric no longer resonates with anyone — except the powerbrokers of the African Union and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in their Mercedes limousines.

Mugabe’s use of postcolonial rhetoric is genuinely brilliant. The bogeymen he conjures, combined with the respect still accorded to him as a veteran who supported other leaders in their countries’ fights (Zimbabwe was a key frontline state in the war against apartheid), means that he steadily undermines the ability of regional organisations to stand up for any of the principles of governance they theoretically hold dear.

AND the dearth of meaningful intervention by the west (just some half-hearted bank account freezes and ill-defined travel restrictions on Mugabe’s cronies) puts the lie to any claims about intervention to support democracy and human rights.

It is time we actually considered what is required for true democracy in Zimbabwe and across the African continent. There is an underlying problem in the thinking of African ruling elites: they believe that elections are indeed enough to measure democracy by.

The concept of some sort of limit to power is largely anathema. Once they have it, they will keep it, come what may.

We cannot turn our backs on Africa, tempting as it might appear. Great work has been done by Irish officials in Mozambique; Irish troops are on their way to help bring peace to Chad as we speak. But Africa’s greatest need is help with building strong, independent civil society institutions, not bags of grain or guns.

In Patrick Hillery’s day there was at least an effort to right wrongs, to treat the continent as part of the global community. Nowadays, the developed word hides behind compromised organisations like the African Union and the SADC for fear of appearing to tell Africans how to behave. Archbishop Desmond Tutu says we are cowards. He is right.