The Tragic Lie

Over 40 years ago, as Africa commenced the long  and arduous process ofdecolonisation, one of its foremost liberationist thinkers issued a propheticwarning. Frantz Fanon, himself a freedom fighter, wrote that the national leaderin the postcolonial era should not 'fall back into the past and become drunk onthe remembrance of the epoch leading up to independence.' His powerfuldescriptions of a once effective leader who gradually  secedes from realityand betrays the people who entrust him with their future has resonances for thetragic situation in which Zimbabwe finds itself today. Having reduced a oncesignificant anti-colonialism to a self-serving dogma, Robert Mugabe is the kindof fallen leader Fanon cautioned Africa against. Hesitant African leaders whoare being called upon to intervene might want to reread his classic essay, ‘The Pitfalls of National Consciousness’ from that classic liberationisttext, The Wretched of the Earth.

As Zimbabwe spirals into further political chaos, Mugabe and his party’saddiction to power will further indulge an equally self-serving Western appetitefor spectacles of Third World despotism. If Mugabe finds it convenient to invokethe demon of  colonial oppression (which many Zimbabweans, barely thirtyyears out of colonial rule, remember all too well), he also enables Britishpoliticians to spout  pieties condemning violence while their own nation iscurrently implicated in two dubious and bloody wars. Were the BBC and Channel 4to show as many close-ups of injured and dead Iraqis as they do of Mugabe’smaimed victims, criticism of violence against innocents might be somewhat moreevenly distributed than it currently is. The British government turns accusatoryfingers in Zimbabwe’s direction while Mugabe shouts back anti-colonialslogans. It is a perfect symbiosis, a mutually convenient embrace ofdenunciation, with each party laying claim to the higher moral ground. The onlyinnocents, however, are ordinary Zimbabweans.  

Both Mugabe and Britain are guilty of avoiding historical truths in favour ofa skewed story which legitimates their own position. Britain’s persistent refusal to acknowledge its own colonial legacies is contradictory. It reneged onits commitments to the land reform programme claiming, in Claire Short’swords, that there were no 'links to former colonial interests'  whilenevertheless concerning itself with the fate of the white farmers who representthese interests.  Alongside an extremely selective use of human rightsdiscourse, such contradictions mean that Mugabe's denunciations have some truthto them even if their main purpose is to detract from the ruling elite’s owndepravities. While Africa is ostensibly central to Britain’s internationaldevelopment agenda, the emphasis has always been on the paternalism of aidrather than acknowledging and making reparations for the economic devastationwrought by colonialism. Rarely do condemnations of land seizure, violence andintimidation extend back to the time Matabeleland came under British rule. Thistoo was accompanied by the seizure of vast swathes of fertile land by a handfulof British farmers while large numbers of Ndebele and Shona people were killedor forced into labour. Brutal modern regimes in that part of the globe didn’tbegin with Mugabe.  

Mugabe,  meanwhile, should also reacquaint himself with the originalaims of anti-colonialism and the people’s expectations of the liberationstruggle in Zimbabwe. Having resisted the anti-poor agendas of internationalmonetary institutions and initiated necessary land reforms, the Zimbabweanleader has also refused all responsibility for those many failures of his rulenot reducible solely to the colonial past. A once dynamic band of freedomfighters have degenerated into a party who brandish their liberationist laurelswhile they subjugate, starve and brutalize an entire population in the name ofanti-colonialism. The sanctions imposed by the West have, as they usually do insuch cases, strengthened Mugabe’s brutish hold on power and further harmed thevulnerable.

Real anti-colonialists like Fanon and Gandhi both insisted that that freedomwas not about replacing the white tyrant with the brown or black one. Mugabe isthe exemplary cautionary tale here, a freedom fighter who has essentiallyrecolonised his people. Indeed, the very techniques of suppression andintimidation deployed by the Zimbabwean leader, a knight of the British Empireuntil yesterday, were taught to him by the colonial masters he professes todespise. Censorship, brutal suppression of resistance and the dismissal of anyform of criticism as seditious were all part of the colonial arsenal. Quick toclaim credit for spreading parliamentary democracy, Britain is less forthcomingabout acknowledging the legacy of authoritarian rule also left behind by itsempire.. 

Frantz Fanon died young, but one can imagine what he might have to say to hisfellow former liberationist: Mr Mugabe, it is time for you to return the powerwhich the Zimbabwean people once vested in you but which they now legitimatelywish to reclaim. Liberate them from the tyranny of the rule you have exercisedfor too long and without a continuing mandate. Your actions weaken all of us whohold the accomplishments of liberation dear and only strengthen the hypocrisiesof former colonial powers. The great tradition of African anti-colonialism towhich you constantly refer has never  been about blaming the coloniseralone; it has always taken account of the culpability and responsibilities ofAfrican leaders and elites.  

As for those in Britain, it is time for the 'proper analysis' somecommentators have called for, one which would include honest reflections on theimperial legacy rather than 'shutting up' because of colonial guilt. It is theonly way to deprive Mugabe of his main moral weapon. This is not just about thekind of simple-minded 'balance' which the BBC generally advocates (though it haslong since abandoned that value with regard to Zimbabwe), but also an informedsense of how history shapes the present. Failing this, Zimbabwe and the rest ofus are destined to asphyxiate ourselves in what Fanon aptly termed 'the tragiclie' of the aftermath of colonialism.  

A shorter version of this piece appears in the Guardian today