USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fwd: Reply: Mugabe and the White African by Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson

an interesting take on mugabe; a corrective, perhaps, to the view of the journalist as opposed to the historian? the former needs headlines; the latter, nuance.
ken

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Reply: Mugabe and the White African by Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson
Date:	Wed, 20 Apr 2011 20:29:01 +0200
From:	Prinisha Badassy <badassy@GMAIL.COM>
Reply-To:	H-NET List for African History and Culture <H-AFRICA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
To:	H-AFRICA@H-NET.MSU.EDU

Date: 20 April 2011 20:15 From: Chakanetsa Mavhunga, MIT          <clappertonm@yahoo.com>  Incidentally, I have just published an article, the last two sections of which present an alternative perspective of Robert Mugabe seeking neither to vilify nor eulogize him. ("A plundering tiger with its deadly cubs: The USSR and China as Weapons in the Engineering of a Zimbabwean Nation," in Gabrielle Hecht (eds.), Entangled Geographies: Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War," MIT Press, 2011). One of the things I try to do is to recast the discussion of this important 20th and 21st century African figure as a political engineer, one who, for better or worse mastered the art of getting into and staying in power. This, to my mind, is a more neutral venue from which to examine why and how this man has successfully outwitted his opponents or potential and actual challengers. I suggest that certain kinds of psychoanalytical and hostile critiques of Mugabe, whether by western governments or writers, as well as eulogies and reluctances to criticize him, are some of the most powerful instruments Mugabe has used to construct a narrative of nationalism and struggle in Zimbabwe that has him and Zanu (PF) as its central ratio. Remarkably, what J. M. Coetzee called "white writing" sums up each and every biography of Mugabe in prose, fiction or film. A lot of the portraits of Mugabe are laughable, and many more of them downright disingenuous. Others, however, are not funny: in that when they caricature Mugabe, they tend to "caricature by association." It is this essentialization of "the African crisis" through icons of vilification, bordering on very lazy pseudo-journalism masquerading as intellectual commentary.  The Robert Mugabe I find more interesting is one that we should render neutral before our analysis, instead of using him as a vehicle through which to purvey our subjective positions. How exactly do I know that when someone is talking to me and eulogizing or vilifying Mugabe, they are not also talking about me, using him as surreptitious speech to caricature me? This version of historicizing African leaders using only their worst moments often belie the fact that once upon a time some of these overstayed leaders were very popular and well-meaning. Where in these narratives are the stories of the many clinics, schools, food for work programs etc. that Mugabe initiated? This is what the vilifying narrative does not tell us; it is a framing of Zimbabwean history within the mindcast of violence. It's opposite is the eulogizing narrative, which praises these great nation-building, liberating works of Zanu while silent about Zapu, blind to the massacres in Matabeleland, and blinder still to the Wollowgate Scandal?  As I see it, any position that takes either or other of these two extremes risks hostile rebuke and downright dismissal by the rising young Zimbabwean intelligentsia that believes in crafting its own narratives. Why? Because there seems to be an agenda to make us forget that colonialism happened and to paint the postcolony so dark that we can't see before the dawn that ushered it. This attempt is being strengthened by the expiry (through death) of our fathers and mothers who bore personally the brunt of colonial oppression. Its pain is remote to the born-free; that of Mugabe is fresh. A scare has no pain; not so an open wound. It is forgotten that the process by which Mr. Campbell and his family here ended up getting this farm, never mind how legally, started in a very sadistic, cruel, and arbitrary seizure of land from the inhabitants of the land. Colonialism is old news, we are told. It is true that not all Europeans were bad people; but to turn every tiny stone in order to find evidence of good colonists, then generalizing their harmonious relations with Africans to sanitize colonial rule is as wrong as using the cruelty of Robert Mugabe to sanitize colonialism. That is exactly Mugabe's tactic: to use Smith and Rhodesian tyranny over black people to justify a crackdown upon Zimbabweans.  Why should it not be possible to condemn the massacres the Ndebele committed upon their neighbors like the Shona before 1893 AND the genocide that Mugabe, a Shona, committed against the Ndebele after 1980? Why should it not be possible to condemn the evil that Ian Douglas Smith AND the 'Black Smith' Robert Mugabe committed as crimes against humanity? Isn't it strange that the masterminds of Rhodesia's use of biological and chemical weapons like crop defoliants, napalm, cholera, anthrax, thallium, and compound 1080, just like those who slit foetuses out of pregnant women in Matabeleland, and roasted MDC supporters alive after 2000, all walk free and we have to reconstruct those narratives from anecdotes?  Zimbabweans at large have endured a lot of abuse from Robert Mugabe. The Campbells lost property. Many black opponents of Robert Mugabe lost their lives. Do Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson know that 2,000 skeletons are being exhumed from mine shafts in Mount Darwin? It is said Smith's intelligence murdered them? It is also said that the many people who disappeared during Gukurahundi and after 2000 might be among these skeletons. This is just one site; how many caves and mine shafts are in Zimbabwe? Are these any lesser beings, or is it because they do not fit the "Mugabe and the White African"? When are we going to realize that there are no 'lesser' or 'more' human beings?   Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Assistant Professor, Program in STS, MIT, mavhunga@mit.edu