Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy ofZimbabwe By Martin Meredith. PublicAffairs, 243 pages, $26.00
By the time Robert Mugabe had led a guerrilla war againstIan Smith's white regime in Rhodesia and spent 11 years in prison, whateveridealism he had known in his youth had been battered out of him. Though heconsidered himself a socialist when he came to power in 1980, Mugabe's entire22-year reign in what became the Republic of Zimbabwe has been marked not byconcern for the welfare of his people but by his own determination to bepresident for life. As every day brings new accounts of political repression inZimbabwe, Martin Meredith's timely book reminds us that this is politics as usualfor Mugabe.
Under Mugabe's rule, Zimbabwe has been a terrorized country. Villagershave been massacred, journalists tortured. Mugabe has confiscated farms fromwhites and from blacks who don't fall into political line (and then given thefarms to his friends); black farm workers have lost their jobs by the thousands.Today, at least 60 percent of Zimbabwe's people are unemployed. As AIDS ravagesthe population, life expectancy has dropped to 39 from 63 in 10 years. Meredithtells the story of this awful, bloody trek right down to the eve of Zimbabwe'srecent discredited election.
Our Votes, Our Guns is a straightforward factual description of Mugabe's early life and subsequent rule. This is very much an outsider's history, written for the most part, apparently, from published accounts. (It is hard to know for sure because Meredith provides no source notes, dropping quotes into the text without indicating where they came from.) Although Meredith has reported on Africa for the London Observer and Sunday Times, his book does not have the close-to-the-ground feel of a journalist's tale in the manner of, for example, Philip Gourevitch's chilling report of genocide in Rwanda, We Wish ToInform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. Yet so dramatic is the story Meredith tells that even his flat factuality carries you along, taking on momentum as he rolls down to his closing indictment: that Mugabe's "sole purpose had become to hold on to power. Whatever the cost, his regime was dedicated towards that end. Violence had paid off in the past; he expected it to secure the future."
The problem for Mugabe is that his rule has never been secure: From the starthe has faced determined resistance, including opposition from former allies inthe nationalist struggle. White-ruled South Africa organized former Rhodesiansoldiers into a destabilization force that attempted to sabotage the new regime.Dedicated to one-party rule, Mugabe would stamp out an opposing party only to seeanother spring up in its place. Meanwhile, though some whites fled the country,many of those who stayed held on to economic power, running large farms andfactories even as Mugabe's former foe Smith carped from the sidelines.
These would have been immense challenges even for a political genius. AsMeredith portrays him, Mugabe was not that. He was, in fact, relativelyinexperienced in politics. He had spent brief periods in South Africa and Ghana,where he learned the rhetoric of socialism. A former teacher, he had devoted hisyears as a political prisoner to self-education. But the most immediate,practical lessons he learned about political life he learned from Smith, the manwho had put him in prison.
It is easy, as the past recedes, to forget the brutality of the colonialsystem. We need to keep that in mind as we read accounts like Meredith's lest weimagine that African despots invented today's political nightmares all bythemselves. Meredith does not deny the role colonial life played in settingZimbabwe up for failure, but he leaves largely unexplored the colonial andcold-war crucible in which Mugabe concocted his political style.
Nor does Meredith attempt to answer this question, raised by the evidence heprovides: Could Mugabe have done better given the challenges he faced? How canyou transform a country of commercial farms into a country of small family farms?To keep his promise of giving white-owned land to the people, Mugabe would havehad to dismantle Zimbabwe's existing economy and put in place a radicallydifferent one. Meanwhile, he faced expectations for schools and health care andother government services -- all requiring income from taxes -- income morelikely to come from commercial farms than subsistence ones. Despite internationalsupport and financial help, land reform has only inched along in Zimbabwe. Fewerthan 5,000 white farmers still own 70 percent of the most productive land.
The recent elections have confirmed Zimbabwe's place in the outercircle of nations. Discredited by vote rigging and violence (48 people have beenreported killed since the start of this year), the elections have furtherisolated Mugabe: The Commonwealth, an organization of 54 nations, has suspendedZimbabwe from its meetings for a year, Switzerland has frozen Zimbabweanofficials' financial assets, and Denmark has closed its embassy and cut off theflow of development funds.
Acting through mobs and brigades controlled by his political party,Mugabe has unleashed a wave of terror meant to stamp out the opposition group,the Movement for Democratic Change. Activists have been tortured and raped, theirhomes burned. They have fled by the thousands. Food supplies have been cut off tovillages identified with the opposition. Hundreds have been arrested. Theinternational press has reported four deaths since the election. Attempting tomake good on Mugabe's election promise to turn over white farmers' land to blackZimbabweans, bands of squatters and vigilantes, some of them war veterans, havelaid siege to farms.
The United States has condemned the arrest of Mugabe's election opponent,Morgan Tsvangirai. But some African leaders have congratulated Mugabe on hisvictory -- among them Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, who, like Mugabe, hasused patronage and intimidation to hold onto power. Representatives fromneighboring Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and the Democratic Republic ofthe Congo -- practicing realpolitik -- attended Mugabe's inauguration. The SouthAfrican Development Community and the Organization of African Unity havepronounced the election fair. Even Africans who disapprove of Mugabe resentcriticism from the West, with its own sorry record of pillage and oppression inAfrica.
Yet leaders of the countries that surround his cannot help but worry. Thispart of Africa has already undergone terrible trauma since independence: IdiAmin's massacres in Uganda, genocide in Rwanda, and armed conflict in the Congo,where Mugabe sent troops to deflect attention from his own failures at home. WillMugabe's ruthless rule in Zimbabwe lead to greater violence in his own countryand further destabilization of an already unstable region?
If there is reason for hope, it may lie less in pressure from the outsideworld than in the determination of Zimbabweans themselves to unseat Mugabe andcreate a saner political order. All along -- as Meredith makes clear -- amidstthe corruption and fear, there have been elements of integrity in Zimbabwe. Inthe courts, black and white judges have struggled mightily to uphold the rule oflaw. Independent journalists have countered the propaganda of the governmentpress. Labor unions have led the recent effort to defeat Mugabe at the ballotbox. Despite the current terror, Mugabe's opposition has staged strikes anddemonstrations, calling for a new constitution. But organizing is difficult:Under the Public Order and Security Act, police must approve any politicalmeeting of more than three people. Several hundred arrests have already beenmade under the act. Journalists reporting these developments have themselves been arrested. Yet, as elsewhere in Africa where postcolonial dictators have runroughshod over their people, Zimbabweans have clung tenaciously to the notionthat despite enormous obstacles, Africa can do better.
