Twenty-five years ago, people involved in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa would say wistfully: “Look at Zimbabwe. It’s come through a bitter war of liberation without wrecking its social cohesion, it’s developed a proper democratic culture and it’s feeding itself.”
Granted, this was, even then, a slightly too rosy picture, but it wasn’t nonsense. It represented a conviction that Zimbabwe was showing what was possible to its neighbours and indeed to the whole continent.
And this means that one of the worst of the countless casualties inflicted by Robert Mugabe on his wretched country is the destruction of many people’s hopes, both in Zimbabwe itself and throughout Africa. The continent can’t afford more failed states, mass hunger, contempt for the rule of law. And how much more painful it is when a country has been held up as a sign of promise.
It’s not as if this whole matter wasn’t predictable. Zimbabwe was a relatively stable tobacco-producing nation even a decade ago. Everybody sat on their hands. Totally preventable. Mugabe has at least one doctorate degree, so he’s not ignorant – he’s the devil – where were all the hand-wringers when they could have done something ?