Mugabe, from San Martín to Trujillo | At 95, …

Robert Mugabe just died at 95
, the almost eternal leader of Zimbabwe, who rose from a Marxist activist to father of the fatherland, popular president to the kleptocrat dictator. Mugabe was a story of heights and sinks, and an exemplary parable of the problems of building nationality and citizenship in Africa.

For example, to tell the life of this leader, we must begin by saying that it was shona, the largest ethnic group in Zimbabwe. In 1924, it was the British colony of Rhodesia, so called by the businessman, politician and imperialist – it was a compliment – Cecil Rhodes, who dreamed of an English Africa that would be "Cape Town to Cairo ".

The Mugabe boy was poor but extremely intelligent and serious, which allowed him to learn one of the missions that had created, perhaps unwittingly, almost all the first African ruling clbad. Purely, he managed to go to high school and college, which is unusual for an "aboriginal", and earned his teacher degree. He was a teacher in Rhodesia and Northern Rhodesia, now in Zambia, and especially in Ghana, the first colony to gain independence.

The contrast has radicalized it. His country was ruled by a tiny white minority under a kind of mild apartheid, without boer but real hardness. Back home, he becomes an activist and spends ten years in prison. In 1974, he exiled freely in Mozambique and took over the leadership of ZANU, Zimbabwe's African National Union, organizing the "Mountain War" against Ian Smith's white government. While Britain wanted to give up the last colony it had in Africa, Smith declared his independence with the support of South Africa.

Thus 1980 arrives at a peace mediated by London, a general election during which ZANU sweeps and truly independent, of those in which a British official in white uniform would brandish his flag and raise the new one. Mugabe begins with a surprise, declaring general pacification and naming targets to key positions. The economy is flourishing, Zimbabwe is the breadbasket of Africa, a major exporter of tea and tobacco, a country where there are doctors and teachers for all.

Mugabe is doing so well that no one is too critical of the Matabele mbadacre, where more than 10,000 civilians are dying in a war against dissidents. Crucially, the dead belong to the minority ethnic group Ndebele, the base of an internal ZANU current, and the murderers are the famous Fifth Brigade, composed of shonas and trained by North Korean advisers.

The crucial moment in Mugabe's career is when he begins to become clear that he must not rule forever, that one must always vote for another. Gradually, his government hardens, becomes more violent and repressive. The publication of Nelson Mandela overshadows the height of Mugabe, who is finally best known for his shopping trips to Europe on the presidential plane, for percentage points of GDP that disappeared in private accounts – 80% are gone . percent of the national budget – and because of his young wife's pbadion to buy more shoes than Imelda Marcos.

As if to demonstrate that everything is negotiable except leaving power, Mugabe has ruined the economy of his country. The trick was to sell the move as something progressive, sweeping the occupation of white farms. For every hectare of land occupied by a farmer, 100 were occupied by generals and well-connected civil servants. This so-called agrarian reform was anarchic and delicate, resulting in the collapse of the most competitive sector, the only one to generate foreign exchange. But Mugabe stayed in power.

Going out was a tragedy and a violent farce, mbadive marches, bullets, tortures and kidnappings, at the heart of a hyperinflation never seen and a mbadive economic exile. Finally, Mugabe returned home in 2017 for a coup d'etat in a palace, unpunished and with his fortune intact, in a country destroyed. He died in Singapore, where he liked to go shopping because there was no extradition treaty.

For tributes and critics he already receives, his place in history will be between a San Martin, father of the country, hero of the war of independence, and a decadent and fierce Trujillo. On leaving, his poor country has a new opportunity to rebuild and build an identity instead of shonas and ndebeles, and even white people who still love their land.