In his article on “How dictators stay in power” see
The Zimbabwean newspaper, UZ Student Zivai Mhetu attributed the dictators’
staying-power to how they create fictitious enemies to divert attention away
from their own misrule.
“Their most common tactic is that of conjuring up
‘enemies of the people’ or fictitious threats in a bid to rally their people
against an imaginary foe while distracting them from the real enemy – the
dictator himself. For Hitler it was the Jews, for Idi Amin, the Asians; for
other African dictators, the west,” wrote Zivai.
Zivai went on to give many examples of how dictators
have played this dirty trick to achieve their objective; I encourage you to
read the article for yourself, it is well worth reading; I will just quote the
last example he gave.
“In the social sciences, legitimation refers to the
process whereby an act, process, ideology, or in this case, the dictator
becomes legitimate by his/her attachment to norms and values widely shared
within the country,” wrote Zivai. “A strong anti-gay stance in a nation that is
predominantly Christian and frowns upon that sort of thing can move mountains
for a dictator in as far as the legitimation process is concerned. The same
applies for inclination towards socialist policies in a country where the
majority are workers and not owners of capital.”
Mugabe’s anti-gay stance did indeed move political
opinion mountains for him in 1995; I remember it as clearly as if it was
yesterday. That year The Zimbabwe Book Fair organizers had assembled such
luminaries as playwright and poet Wole Soyinka and author Nadine Gordimer both
winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature is 1986 and 1991 respective to speak
about freedom of expression. Given Zanu PF’s total domination of the public
media and draconian laws to muzzle the little private media there was left in
the country; freedom of expression was therefore a burning issue to every freedom
loving Zimbabweans, at least one would have thought.
The Book Fair organizers had allowed Zimbabwe’s Gay
and Lesbian group, who were campaigning for the scraping of the law homosexual
a criminal offence, to have a stand at the book fair. The Zanu PF control
public media pick on that and went to town and so did Mugabe.
Mugabe and his propagandists distorted the facts
turning the homosexual debate into such an emotive issue, the important debate
on freedom of expression was elbowed off the national agenda and the golden opportunity
to address this key national issue was lost! Indeed Mugabe has often evoked
this theme again and again precisely because it is an emotive issue and has milked
it for all its worth!
Today, 36 years after our independence, Zimbabwe is
in a serious political and economic mess whose Genesis can be traced back to
the country’s failure to create a free, just and democratic society in 1980. The
only way out of the mess is for the country to implement democratic reforms
designed to dismantle the Zanu PF dictatorship. One of these key reforms is
media reform to ensure the country has freedom of expression and free media –
the very things Wole Soyinka and Nadine Gordimer told about in the Oasis Hotel back
in 1995, if only we had listened!
Zivai started his article by speculating on where
dictators get their inspirations on what tricks to play to stay in power.
“Dictators who have emerged all over the world in
modern times use such similar tactics to stay in power that one can be forgiven
for thinking they have a secret ‘dictator’s book’ with instructions on how to
establish and consolidate despotic rule,” he speculated. “Either such a book
exists – the Prince by Machiavelli maybe – or the autocratic behaviour of
dictators constitutes a case of isomorphic mimicry of the earliest people in
the ‘trade.’”
There is a more simple and obvious explanation here
for which the dictator does not need a book or master art of mimicry – child psychology.
If you want to take away the toy from a
child you play with the empty box with such attention that the child quickly
loses interest in the toy and want to play with the box. It works every time
because the child has no sense of the true value of the toy compared to the
empty box!
Mugabe has systematically and routinely denied us
our freedoms and basic human rights and dignities as easily as one taking away
toys from a child. Dictators’ machinations and shenanigans work on a very naïve
and gullible public – people who, instead of seeing all the colours of the
rainbow, see everything only in monochrome, black or white, right or wrong and,
with the application of more ruthless brainwashing technics, will even believe poor
is the new rich and to bleat “four legs good, two legs better!”
Of course the Zimbabweans are not helpless children
and therefore should know better but clearly the do not as Mugabe has blatantly
conned them again and again for the last 36 years; the facts on the ground
speak for themselves.
So Zivai Mhetu, it is not so much how the dictator
is staying in power but rather how the people themselves, by being so naïve and
gullible, are the ones keeping the tyrant in power. The argument to see the
people themselves not just as powerless and helpless victims of the dictatorship
but rather as the authors of their own tragic tale gains more credence when one
considers the number of opportunities the people had to end the dictatorship
and yet wasted them all.
The best chance Zimbabwe had in the last 36 years to
end the Mugabe dictatorship was, without doubt, during the 2008 to 2013 GNU.
All the nation needed to do then was to implement the democratic reforms spelt
out in the 2008 GPA. Not even one was implemented!
Yes Mugabe played his usual devil’s role in that he
is the one who bribed Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC friends to kick the reforms
into the tall grass. Still it cannot be denied that it was us, the people, who
once made it so damn easy for Mugabe carryout his evil plans; we are the ones who
elected the corrupt and incompetent MDC leaders into power in the first place and,
to make matters worse, failed to supervise the village idiots to ensure all the
reforms were implemented.
Zimbabwe’s worsening economic situation has brought
a lot of human misery and even deaths many people are now living in abject poverty
and where poverty dwells, sickness and death are there also. The only positive
thing to emerge out of the economic meltdown is that it has forced Mugabe and
Zanu PF to accept that there will have to be political change or the economic
situation will get worse and worse until there is change. The most important
question now is what kind of political change are we going to see?
If the people continue to be naïve and gullible and
elect corrupt and incompetent opposition leaders then it is certain that no
meaningful reforms will be implemented. Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti, Mai Mujuru and
many of the current crop of opposition leaders have already proven beyond all
reasonable doubt that they are corrupt and incompetent it is sheer folly to
believe that anyone of them will deliver the democratic changes the nation is
dying for.
As things stand, the best solution for Zimbabwe
right now is to have an interim government whose principal duty is to implement
all the democratic reforms and thus completely dismantle the Zanu PF
dictatorship and replace the system with a democratic complete with free media
and freedom of expression and democratic competition. Quality leaders will
emerge out of this system.
It is most disconcerting to hear people who have
only recently started denouncing Mugabe as a murderous tyrant and even join in
the street protest boasting of “Tajamuka” (We are enlightened!). And yet the
same people continue to follow the same recycled corrupt and incompetent
leaders like Tsvangirai or Mujuru. They are clearly refusing to see Tsvangirai
or Mai Mujuru for the corrupt and incompetent leaders they are because of the
binary mentality, having finally decided Mugabe was bad anyone challenging
Mugabe must therefore be good! Being enlightened meanings one is no longer naïve
and gullible and cured of the simplicity binary mentality.
Conclusion: it is the naïve and gullible electorate
with their childlike binary mentality who are keeping dictators in power. It
therefore follows that in the fight to end dictatorial rule and/or to guard
against it rearing its ugly head make sure the people are not naïve and
gullible.
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