The Fall of Mugabe

Born hopelessly out of time and place, a paternalistic white so-called liberal in Southern Rhodesia at Empire’s end, I loved my country unreservedly.  Nowhere else can take its place.  I was proud of the broadly beneficial role played by Britain around the globe: it was, for instance, the nation that had put a stop to slavery (I didn’t realise then the extent to which others were still practicing it).

When a gullible man led a frightened electorate into trying to perpetuate white rule in a shifting world I didn’t shy away from claiming he was mistaken.  I wasn’t hounded in the way I might have been in, say, South Africa or East Germany.  But when the war intensified, well, then I was in a real bind.  The last chance was gone for us whites to make a pact with the black majority.  It’d always been a slim chance, for the misgoverning had started early on, and yet I hoped against hope....  But no.  Old Rhodesians of the die-hard breed and many a new immigrant – a well-off refugee from the welfare state, perhaps, or an ex-trade unionist with a fancy to be the boss – stiffened the backbone of the Rhodesian Front, and they prevailed at the ballot box.

I had, by chance, exemption from military service, but I was now perfectly fit enough to fight and my status was coming up for review.  However, I didn’t fancy fighting in the patently hopeless war against the insurgents.  The time for moderates, who try to understand all points of view, who call for goodwill, was past.  I left Rhodesia, feeling guilty, and the intransigent and callous white government was inevitably replaced by its black shadow, much more intransigent, much more callous.

Ian Smith’s nastier twin, Robert Mugabe, has now gone, but you would have to be a pollyanna to think a new era has dawned.  So my heart is heavy and my only consolation is I can pronounce “Mnangagwa”.  Why can’t the English get their tongues round foreign names: Hyundai, Melbourne, Capri?  (I digress.)

I learned one thing only about human nature from those years.  That was that we’re all driven by emotion, which we rationalise away if we’re would-be intellectuals or just go along with if we’re not.  One day before I left Rhodesia I was debating with a pleasant, generous fellow, explaining in purely economic terms that to encourage an educated African bourgeoisie – “partnership”, it was once called – would benefit us as much as them, and he listened with a sceptical smile and then he cut me short: “Tell me,” he said, “do you like the buggers—?”  That shut me up.  Well, actually, yes, I did: I liked the cheerful servants I knew and the few black professionals I’d met and I had been brought up to believe in a sentimental notion of “fair play”.  And I was as much driven by emotion as he was.