Why Africans Love Mugabe

[Written by a friend who travels regularly to African countries on behalf of charitable foundations].

If you go to suburban Dar es Salaam you'll see Mugabe High School, Mugabe Hotel and Mugabe Gardens. When you ask why these are so named, they tell you it's just because he happened to officially open these buildings. Enquire why the Zimbabwean dictator was invited to open them and Tanzanians will talk amongst themselves in Swahili. Since these people know that Mugabe is unpopular in the West, they are reluctant to voice their admiration for him, an affection that spreads across this vast continent. The truth is that the 84 year old dictator has rock-star status in most parts of the continent. Not for nothing does Mugabe thumb his nose at opponents with supreme confidence in his impunity. Why else is Zimbabwe allowed to be destroyed without local intervention or even a neighbourly reprimand? The question is simple though the issue is complex.

Religion is not the answer. Dar is a staunch muslim city where 90% of the men are in the mosque at 4am every morning. Walking in the street, womens heads and faces are covered. It may be religious but the AIDS rate is 17% so the veils and prayer mats aren't working. Arabs are welcomed more than English speakers for their common ethnicity which stretches back 400 years. Yet this is not the reason why Mugabe is a hero, as he isn't muslim.

Colour isn't the cause. Dar residents aren't pure black like Zimbabweans because they have Semitic blood from the days when the Sultan of Oman ruled the trade in slaves brought from what is now called Zambia and Malawi. Eastern Tanzanians are a coffee colour not black, though this alone does not explain their admiration for the Zimbos leader.

Nor is it a question of money. Africans don't despise us solely on material grounds, though some might. Envy is certainly not unknown here. They beg and plead for cash from tourists like any other poor people, though that alone doesn't mean they resent us having banknotes to give away. Many Dar folks work for western corporations, meaning some have more money than we do.

The unique reason behind African's love of Mugabe has more to do with the way he frog-marched white farmers and businessmen out of the country. Africans cheer at his audacity to forcibly supplant paleface landowners with local Shona tribe pastoralists. Jack's as good as his master? No, Mugabe says he's better.

What's going on there? How can such a self-defeating act arouse such fervent loyalty, identity and warmth? The answer is because Mugabe strikes a cord with all Africans when he becomes the one who barks out the orders to the white man. Africans love to see one of their kind in all the positions of power, regardless of whether they have a clue how to discharge it.

Most Dar folks retain a smouldering bitterness at not being educated, trained and experienced enough to assume positions of authority. Its their country, damn it, and here are these mezungos making decisions for them. Their selective amnesia overlooks that the departure of white Zimbabwean farmers means that the nation now starves, for the heady rhetoric of abusing whites while sending them packing blocks out all logic. It also overlooks that there are no short-cuts to development, only the persistent education of children, the solidarity of families and community building in partnership with selective benefactors.

Suffer the Children

There are 50,000 people camped in the Showgrounds at Eldoret, in dusty western Kenya. 35,000 of them are children under 16. If personal space matters to you, then lifestyle considerations may mean you wouldn't want to be living in one of the 10,000 primitive tents crammed into an area the size of the Melbourne Cricket Ground [MCG]. With no lighting available, it's pitch black once the sun goes down, leaving the refugees with no way of moving around at night if they're ill or need help. It also exposes them to assaults and robbery. Women headed families are vulnerable to rape.

Refugees have been there since January when the too-close-to-call election aftermath saw an explosion of tribal violence. For ordinary people, the Kikuyu government war that has since been waged with the Luo opposition has seen 81,500 homes torched, 7,000 women raped (reported), with a nationwide 370,000 homeless. TCF is supporting Mulli Childrens Family [MCF] with an up-front $100,000 and $50,000 a month to care for the 50,000 at Eldoret.

These people have lost everything. I mean everything: homes, household goods, livestock, children and other relatives. We talked to Jacinta for half an hour. She had lost her husband and home in the fighting. After she bedded her family down at the refugee camp, she sent her 10 year old son back to the charred ruins of their former home to salvage what he could. Young boys alone are at risk here anytime from a range of predators, but when you're from the wrong tribe and the cauldron of hatred is boiling over, it's double jeopardy. So we listened while the mother sobbingly explained how her little fellow had been set upon by tribal mobs, beaten with a machete and chopped into bits. Then they sent a message to her to come and get the pieces. She is a broken woman, losing the struggle to hold it together for her family, but well supported by MCF.

Estelle who lost her husband was raped before her 15 year old son. He was so traumatised he ran away and she can't find him. On the rare occasions that she does see him, he runs away and she tells us that she can't run after him because of her rape damage. We suspect she has a fistula or worse that needs urgent medical attention, though there is no doctor let alone surgeon to care for the teeming mass of Eldoret refugees.

When homes burn down, so does their documentation, leaving them with no ID and no insurance policy. You think insurance companies will pay without documentation? That's a big Maybe. The clever, the well connected and the persistent will eventually receive some compensation, but if your husband has been killed and your kids are sick and injured on the MCG, you may not have the ability to mount a verifiable claim. The absence of a place to go back to afterwards will make rehabilitation costlier and take longer.

Food is scarce in a nation prolific for its agriculture. We saw pastures where maize storks had neither been used for fodder nor turned in by the hoe because the farmers were in the refugee camp. Even if the guys could recover from injury and resume work today, their fertiliser would cost 3 times what it did last year. As farmers will buy less superphosphate, there is a commensurate drop in yield-per-hectare. Any way you cut it, food on the table will halve in 2008 for all but the rich. Of course, the spiralling food prices are not confined to Kenya or even East Africa. It's just that the rest of us are much better positioned to deal with it. When you're a poor refugee and maize costs 3 times what it did last year, it means you starve.

Yet there is food for these destitute people. Each family living at Eldoret showgrounds receives a monthly ration pack from MCF comprising 7 kg of maize, 5 kg beans, 4 kg wheat flour and 4 kg fresh vegetables. The cereal and beans have been bought with the $US50,000 The Charitable Foundation sends, which is boosted by local church support. The vegetables being distributed have been grown at the 2000 hectare MCF farm in Ndalani under intensive cultivation -- also supported by TCF.

Their massive hyperbonic bean production capacity will increase by 400% this year. We will pay for Estelle to see a gyno and whatever else she needs. The Charitable Foundation also put its hand in its pocket so Janicta's son could have a decent burial. Most of the 50,000 people will need us for the rest of 2008, though by year end we hope that emergency relief will turn into resettlement and rehabilitation. The primary prerequisite will be peace -- national reconciliation and an absolute end to tribal violence. That's a big ask but its slowly dawning on Kenyans that there is no alternative.

Kevin Gray

May 2008