There is a widely held belief that Mugabe will never voluntarily surrender power because, if he ever does, the sins of his past will come back to haunt him. And there is good evidence to cling to that view.

Memories of Zaire’s former President Mobutu Sese Seko dying and being buried in Morocco in 1997 as a dejected, tormented and stateless person still linger. Similarly, Mugabe is mindful of the tormented Charles Taylor. He has been on trial for five long years at The Hague for his misdeeds as Liberia’s head of state.

Equally unnerving are the woes of Frederick Chiluba in neighboring Zambia. He relinquished power democratically to his former protégé, Levy Patrick Mwanawasa, fully assured of exemption from prosecution for his missteps as head of state. However, it did not take long for that immunity to fizzle; Chiluba endured an agonizing international case of graft before his death in June 2011.

Mugabe has been in power for much longer than Taylor or Chiluba were. The winding road that he has travelled is much longer, doubtlessly much bloodier and more intriguing.  He owes it to himself to shield the skeletons in his closet as long as he can. After all, who on the African political landscape can he entrust with such an awesome task? Poor Robert Mugabe is a caged man: there is no place to hide.
 
In short, Mugabe has been found guilty in much of the world’s conscience. The case against him, we are told, is so overwhelming that his political rhetoric should be dismissed with the contempt it deserves.

Another perspective, while regretting the Zimbabwe debacle, insists that Mugabe must be granted a fair hearing.  How can the national hero for the liberation of Zimbabwe simply turn around and tear the country to shreds? 
   
A Mugabe protagonist once protested that, short of a shooting war, international economic sanctions are the worst thing that can happen to any country. Zimbabwe has been under Britain-sponsored international sanctions for many years. 

It is generally accepted that the British mindset towards Zimbabwe is driven by bitterness over Mugabe’s land reforms policy. The stated objective of that policy is to repossess land owned by whites in Zimbabwe and redistribute it to the ‘rightful owners’, indigenous Africans. Since the launch of the so-called ‘forceful land-seizures,’ relations between the Mugabe regime and Britain have deteriorated from bad to worse.

In his view, Mugabe is locked in a deadly fight to affirm Zimbabwe’s right to engage in such a land redistribution scheme. He faces an adamant opponent in Britain whose interest is defined by the fact that the disputed white farms were owned by kith and kin in Zimbabwe. It is a situation of zero-sum-game.

In addition to abhorring the British intensely for deeply personal reasons, Mugabe sees organized political opposition in Zimbabwe as a proxy of the British on a mission to execute its agenda. That mission is to get rid of Mugabe by whatever means necessary and give back the repossessed farms to the whites. Such a mental scenario Mugabe finds impossible to contemplate; indeed he considers it treasonable.

To Mugabe, relinquishing power to the opposition would be tantamount to abdication of his duty to the people of Zimbabwe: to protect them from a new form of neo-colonialism, that of penetrating Africa through indigenous politicians. That is not dictatorship, it is ultimate patriotism.

The pro-Mugabe perspective may sound like self-serving rhetoric, but it strikes a sympathetic chord among African political elite, even in South Africa. During his days of political glory, the deposed ANC Youth League President, Julius Malema, advocated nationalization of mines and land repossession in SA. Those ideas derived inspiration from Mugabe’s actions in Zimbabwe. Hence, Thabo Mbeki’s ‘go-softly-softly’ diplomacy toward the Zimbabwe issue. Political ‘Black brother’ syndrome in action?

Mugabe is widely condemned for the collective pain visited upon his people. He dismisses such charges on the grounds that his actions are directed at the enemies of the all Zimbabweans. To the extent that the Movement for Democratic Change is seen as an ‘agent’ of forces external to Zimbabwe, it is portrayed as the enemy of Zimbabwe; its members are traitors, not innocent Zimbabweans.

Finally, it is the West that chose collective punishment against Zimbabweans. By introducing economic sanctions, the United Kingdom launched the meltdown process against Zimbabwe as a viable state. This was the ultimate collective punishment that did not discriminate between the guilty and the innocent. 

The people of Zimbabwe certainly deserve better. But the shadowy ‘intrigues’ of that country raise a critical question that should be of vital concern to all Africa. To what extent should ‘outsiders’ be allowed to meddle so deeply into our domestic matters?

You can reach the writer via jnkarioki@gmail.com