Maybe this sounds like a West-centric, pretentious comment to make, but in short, I believe this mistrust has led many smart, rational leaders to act irrationally.
I think of Thabo Mbeki and his lofty, inspiring vision of the African Renaissance and then I look at his AIDS policy. A deep mistrust of Western actions led an incredibly smart, highly rational man to illogically deny AIDS as a fictitious Western creation. Hundreds of thousands of South Africans died as a result of Mbeki's AIDS denialist policy (365,000 deaths by some counts). Against the overwhelming consensus of a scientific community, Mbeki tacitly endorsed the small minority of AIDS denialists. In 2001, he said the following in reference to AIDS:
Convinced that we are but natural-born, promiscuous carriers of germs, unique in the world, they proclaim that our continent is doomed to an inevitable mortal end because of our unconquerable devotion to the sin of lust. (Wikipedia)
In short, mistrust of the West led Mbeki to view HIV as a product of Western racism--rather than the deadly, but treatable virus that it is.
Similarly, I think of Robert Mugabe as a brilliant man--a hero of African independence and African nationalism--whose mistrust of the West caused him to make some terrible, irrational decisions, and to ultimately go completely insane.
During the decade he spent as political prisoner and in the time before he became involved in the independence struggle, Mugabe earned six degrees. He was a teacher of teachers and he was driven; determined to push his knowledge and intellect as far as he could, and determined to fight for freedom and equality.
And his ideology and struggle were both courageous and savvy. While Joshua Nkomo (leader of ZAPU, a rival party in Zim's liberation struggle) was trying to negotiate for a peaceful transition to majority rule, Mugabe sought total concessions from the Rhodesian minority and an unrestricted transition to majority rule. At the Lancaster House agreements, Mugabe stood out for his uncompromising commitment to complete independence. Unlike other liberation fighters, he questioned the agreements because they still guaranteed whites a set number of seats in Parliament and protected their land rights for the next decade.
He advocated violence, but he also advocated a complete revolution whereby the racial hierarchies of Rhodesian rule would be torn down completely. Although I'm against violence and I think an extreme approach to change can be counter productive, I admire the revolutionary goals that Mugabe held and the unrelenting approach Mugabe took in seeking social change.
In short, Mugabe's deep mistrust of the West was an admirable and highly effective force in the liberation struggle. Perhaps without it, Rhodesian whites would've clung to power for as long as South African whites.
And what impresses me even more about Mugabe is that following independence, Mugabe was able to initially put this mistrust (and the atrocities of the past) behind him. He acted like a Mandela figure--transcending the unspeakable mistreatment of Africans--and forging an idealistic and pragmatic approach to the future. In speaking with Ken Flower, the head of the CIO (like the CIA) during Rhodesian rule, he said the following (He said this after Flower admitted to trying to assassinate Mugabe on several occasions):
As far as I have realised the position, we were trying to kill each other; that's what the war was about. What I'm concerned with now is that my public statements should be believed when I say I have drawn a line through the past. From now on we must trust each other if we are to work together for the benefit of the majority. I want people to believe in my policy of reconciliation and to respond accordingly (Meredith, 42-43).
There are a few things about this quote that stand out to me:
- Mugabe is unbelievably forgiving--he seems almost too forgiving (I couldn't have said that to Flowers).
- Mugabe is more concerned with the future than he is with the past. He wants to "draw a line through the past" and focus on future problems.
- Mugabe exhibits both pragmatism and optimism. While the past atrocities of the white minority should cause Mugabe to act with myopic mistrust, he realizes that this concern is subsidiary to the future. His immediate focus is on the future and on the welfare of the majority of Zimbabweans
This suspension of mistrust, however, was short-lived. Eventually Mugabe's focus on the future gave way to a desire for personal power and a drive to create a one-party state. Mugabe sought to punish political opponents and reward sycophantic allies. He turned the state into an engine for nepotistic greed rather than for social support and infrastructure building. He grabbed land and industry from whites. He blamed Zimbabwe's sufferings on the secret workings of Western spies working for Rhodesian interests. And he called opponents, like the MDC, puppets of the West and "manifestation[s] of 'the resurgence of white power'" (Meredith, 192). His mistrust of the West began to subsume every issue.
Maybe Mugabe believed that the only way to give Zimbabweans real power was to punish the white minority and seize all their resources--maybe he believed, as he did pre-independence, that the only way for real change was through complete revolution. Or alternatively, maybe Mugabe used race as a justification for his own desire for power--maybe racial mistrust was a convenient justification for a power hungry tryrant. I don't know.
But what strikes me is that Mugabe's initial desire to put mistrust aside, and begin on a clean slate, was short lived. His desire to focus on the future, soon gave way to a believe that the past was more important. Defeating past ghosts and correcting past errors created a state built on personal greed--a state where the majority of Zimbabweans suffered. The economy, rival political parties, deteriorating health care and education were all blamed on the West and the minority of Rhodesian whites. Mistrust of the West caused illogical, paranoid policies that exacerbated existing problems.
I believe this is one of colonialism's worst legacies. A legacy whereby many of the brightest, most driven leaders of the future are weighed down by historical injustices of the past. Legacies of the past force leaders to put on historical lenses that are detrimental to the future welfare of the majority. They cause irrationality and distortion. While the basis for this mistrust is legitimate, the actions that this mistrust often justifies are not.
Sources cited:
I just finished reading Martin Meredith's Mugabe: Power, Plunder and the Struggle for Zimbabwe
Good, not great, book. It did a good job introducing me to Zimbabwe's history under Mugabe, but still left me wanting to better understand Mugabe. Seemed more focused on a narrow "Great Man" theory rather than the political and social forces that shaped and surrounded Mugabe (and Zimbabwe as a whole).
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