tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/ian-smith-35320/articlesIan Smith – The Conversation2023-03-09T14:28:58Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2007442023-03-09T14:28:58Z2023-03-09T14:28:58ZJimmy Carter’s African legacy: peacemaker, negotiator and defender of rights<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512455/original/file-20230227-1191-gv4ueg.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Carter's interest in southern Africa was crucial to keeping the peace.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When historians and pundits praise Jimmy Carter’s <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-american-studies/article/abs/nancy-mitchell-jimmy-carter-in-africa-race-and-the-cold-war-stanford-ca-stanford-university-press-2016-4500-pp-xiv-883-isbn-978-0-8047-9358-8/DB52A5925C6F10E199F93FB881AB03D9">achievements</a> as the US president and extol his exemplary post-presidential years, they mention the recognition of China, the <a href="https://billofrightsinstitute.org/e-lessons/the-panama-canal-treaties-jimmy-carter">Panama Canal Treaties</a> and the <a href="https://carterschool.gmu.edu/why-study-here/legacy-leadership/camp-david-hal-saunders-and-responsibility-peacemaking">Camp David Accords</a>. Almost no one mentions what Carter achieved in Africa during his presidency. This is a serious oversight. </p>
<p>When I interviewed President Carter in 2002, <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/extra/?id=25540&i=Excerpt%20from%20the%20Introduction.html">he told me</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I spent more effort and worry on Rhodesia than I did on the Middle East.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The archival record supports the former president’s claim. Reams of documents detail Carter’s sustained and deep focus during his presidency on ending white rule in Rhodesia, and helping to bring about the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/zimbabawean-independence-day">independence of Zimbabwe</a>.</p>
<p>There were several reasons for Carter’s focus on southern Africa. First, realpolitik. Southern Africa was the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25798909?seq=4">hottest theatre</a> of the Cold War when Carter took office in January 1977. A year earlier, Fidel Castro had sent <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Conflicting-Missions-Havana-Washington-1959-1976/dp/0807854646">36,000 Cuban troops</a> to Angola to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Conflicting-Missions-Havana-Washington-1959-1976/dp/0807854646">protect the leftist MPLA</a> from a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Conflicting-Missions-Havana-Washington-1959-1976/dp/0807854646">South African invasion</a> backed by the Gerald Ford administration. The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Visions-Freedom-Washington-Pretoria-1976-1991/dp/1469628325">Cubans remained in Angola until 1991 </a>.</p>
<p>Mozambique was no longer governed by America’s NATO ally, Portugal, but instead by the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4185752">left-leaning Frelimo</a> . Apartheid South Africa – so recently a stable, pro-American outpost far from the Cold War – suddenly faced the prospect of being surrounded by hostile black-ruled states.</p>
<p>The unfolding events in southern Africa riveted Washington’s attention on Rhodesia, where the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">insurgency against the white minority government</a> of <a href="https://www.mandela.ac.za/Leadership-and-Governance/Honorary-Doctorates/Ian-Smith-1979">Ian Smith</a> was escalating. One week after the Carter administration took office it assessed the crisis in Rhodesia: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This situation contains the seeds of another Angola … If the breakdown of talks means intensified warfare, Soviet/Cuban influence is bound to increase.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The administration knew that if the war did not end, the Cuban troops might cross the continent to help the rebels.</p>
<h2>And then what?</h2>
<p>It was unthinkable that the Carter administration, with its <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1977-1980/human-rights#:%7E:text=He%20intended%20to%20infuse%20a,the%20fate%20of%20freedom%20">stress on human rights</a>, would intervene in Rhodesia to support the racist government of Ian Smith. But, given the Cold War, it was equally unthinkable that it would stand aside passively enabling another Soviet-backed Cuban victory in Africa. Therefore, the administration’s first <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44376206">Presidential Review Memorandum</a> on southern Africa, written immediately after Carter took office, announced:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In terms of urgency, the Rhodesian problem is highest priority.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Carter administration assembled a <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=25540">high-powered negotiating team</a>, led by <a href="https://aysps.gsu.edu/andrew-young-biography/">UN Ambassador Andrew Young</a> and <a href="https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/vance">Secretary of State Cyrus Vance</a>, to coordinate with the British and hammer out a settlement. These negotiations, spearheaded by the Americans, led to the <a href="https://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/5847/5/1979_Lancaster_House_Agreement.pdf">Lancaster House talks</a> in Britain, and the free elections in 1980 and black majority rule in an independent in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>There was another reason for Carter’s interest in southern Africa: race. Carter <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hour-Before-Daylight-Memories-Boyhood/dp/0743211995">grew up in the segregated South</a> of the 1920s and 1930s. As a child, he did not question the racist strictures of the <a href="https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/what.htm">Jim Crow South</a>, but as he matured, served in the US Navy and was elected governor of Georgia, his worldview evolved. </p>
<p>He appreciated how the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/">civil rights movement</a> had helped liberate the US South from its regressive past, and he regretted that he had not been an active participant in the movement. When I asked Carter why he had expended so much effort on Rhodesia, part of his explanation was:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I felt a sense of responsibility and some degree of guilt that we had spent an entire century after the Civil War still persecuting blacks, and to me the situation in Africa was inseparable from the fact of deprivation or persecution or oppression of Black people in the South. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Parallels with the US South</h2>
<p>Carter’s belief that there were parallels between the freedom struggles in the US South and in southern Africa may have been naïve, but it was important. </p>
<p>Influenced by Andrew Young, who had been a <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/young-andrew">close aide</a> to <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/biographical/">Martin Luther King </a>, Carter transcended the knee-jerk anticommunist reaction of previous American presidents to the members of the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/struggle-Zimbabwe-Chimurenga-War/dp/0949932000">Patriotic Front</a>, the loose alliance of insurgents fighting the regime of <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/lifeinfocus/a-life-in-focus-ian-douglas-smith-last-white-prime-minister-rhodesia-zimbabwe-a8754971.html">Ian Smith</a>.</p>
<p>Young challenged the Manichaean tropes of the Cold War. <a href="https://stanfordpress.typepad.com/blog/2017/04/race-and-the-cold-war.html">He explained in 1977</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Communism has never been a threat to me … Racism has always been a threat – and that has been the enemy of all of my life. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Young helped Carter see the Patriotic Front, albeit leftist guerrillas supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union, as freedom fighters. Therefore, unlike the Gerald Ford administration which had <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">shunned</a> the Front and tried to settle the conflict through negotiations with the white leaders of Rhodesia and South Africa, Carter considered the Front the key players. He brought them to the fore of the negotiations. This was extraordinarily rare in the annals of US diplomacy during the Cold War. </p>
<p>Carter has not received the credit his administration deserves for the Zimbabwe settlement. It was a success not only in moral terms, enabling free elections in an independent country. It also precluded a repetition of the Cuban intervention in Angola. It was Carter’s signal achievement in sub-Saharan Africa. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=381&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512411/original/file-20230227-24-kep09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The late former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan (C) speaks as former US president Jimmy Carter and Graca Machel of Mozambique look on.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexander Joe/AFP via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Angola and the Cold War reflexes</h2>
<p>Carter also improved US relations with the continent as a whole. He <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">increased</a> trade, diplomatic contacts and, simply, treated Black Africa with respect.</p>
<p>During the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">war in the Horn of Africa</a>, he resisted intense pressure to throw full US support behind the Somalis when the Somali government waged a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jimmy-Carter-Africa-International-History/dp/0804793859">war of aggression</a> against leftist Ethiopia. His administration attempted valiantly to <a href="https://academic.oup.com/dh/article-abstract/34/5/853/490367">negotiate a settlement</a> in Namibia and condemned apartheid in South Africa. </p>
<p>But in Angola, as historian Piero Gleijeses’ superb <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Visions-Freedom-Washington-Pretoria-1976-1991/dp/1469628325">research</a> has shown, Carter reverted to Cold War reflexes. He asserted that the US would restore full relations with Angola only after the Cuban troops had departed. This, even though he knew that the Cubans were there by invitation of the Angolan government, and were essential to hold the South Africans at bay. Carter’s was the typical response of US governments to any perceived communist threat. But it serves to highlight – by contrast – how unusual was the administration’s policy of embracing the Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe. </p>
<p>For the next 40 years, Carter focused more on sub-Saharan Africa than on any other region of the world. The Carter Center’s almost total <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/23/1158358366/jimmy-carter-took-on-the-awful-guinea-worm-when-no-one-else-would-and-he-triumph">eradication of Guinea worm</a> has saved an estimated 80 million Africans from this devastating disease. Its election monitoring throughout the continent, and its conflict resolution programmes, have bolstered democracy. </p>
<p>Carter’s work in Africa, and especially in Zimbabwe, forms a significant and underappreciated part of his impressive legacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200744/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nancy Mitchell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Carter’s work in Zimbabwe forms a significant and under appreciated part of his legacyNancy Mitchell, Professor of History, North Carolina State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1215962019-09-06T09:08:13Z2019-09-06T09:08:13ZRobert Gabriel Mugabe: a man whose list of failures is legion<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287334/original/file-20190808-144862-11u42pa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Robert Mugabe, former President of Zimbabwe, addressing media in Harare, in July 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Yeshiel Panchia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One wishes one could say “rest in peace”. One can only say, “may there be more peace for Zimbabwe’s people, now that <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/robert-mugabe">Robert Gabriel Mugabe</a> has retired permanently”. Zimbabwe’s former president <a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-mugabe-as-divisive-in-death-as-he-was-in-life-108103">has died</a>, aged 95.</p>
<p>His failures are legion. They might start with the 1980s Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland and the Midlands, with perhaps <a href="https://www.sithatha.com/books">20 000 people killed</a>. Next, too much welfare spending <a href="http://weaverpresszimbabwe.com/reviews/59-becoming-zimbabwe?start=10">in the 1980s</a>. Then crudely implemented <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289336044_The_Economic_Structural_Adjustment_Programme_The_Case_of_Zimbabwe_1990-1995">structural adjustment programmes</a> in the 1990s, laying the ground for angry war veterans and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), a strong labour union and civil society based opposition party.</p>
<p>In 1997 Mugabe handed out unbudgeted pensions to the war-vets and promised to really start the “fast track land reform” that got going <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287199114_The_impact_of_land_reform_in_Zimbabwe_on_the_conservation_of_cheetahs_and_other_large_carnivores">in 2000</a>, when the MDC threatened to defeat Zanu (PF) at the polls. That abrogation of property rights started the slide in the Zimbabwean dollar’s value.</p>
<p>From 1998 to 2003 Zimbabwe’s participation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s second war cost US$1 million a day, creating a military cabal used to getting money fast. Speedy money printing presses led to <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/sites/default/files/file%20uploads%20/hany_besada_zimbabwe_picking_up_the_piecesbook4you.pdf">unfathomable hyperinflation</a> and the end of Zimbabwe’s sovereign currency, still the albatross around the country’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-48757080">neck</a>. </p>
<p>In 2008, the MDC’s electoral victory was reversed with a presidential run-off when at least 170 opposition supporters were murdered. Hundreds more were beaten and <a href="http://archive.kubatana.net/docs/elec/rau_critique_zec_elec_report_090612.pdf">chased from their homes</a>. Even Mugabe’s regional support base could not stand for that, so he was forced to accept a <a href="https://africanarguments.org/2013/07/15/review-the-hard-road-to-reform-the-politics-of-zimbabwes-global-political-agreement-reviewed-by-timothy-scarnecchia/">transitional inclusive government</a> with the MDC.</p>
<p>Over the next decade, Mugabe was unable to stop his party’s increasing faction fighting. His years of playing one group off against the other to favour himself <a href="https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:f05aec20-6d98-425a-8d82-56688ea93246/download_file?file_format=pdf&safe_filename=State%2Bintelligence%2Band%2Bthe%2Bpolitics%2Bof%2BZimbabwe%2527s%2Bpresidential%2Bsuccession.pdf&type_of_work=Journal+article">finally wore too thin</a>. When in early November 2017, at his wife Grace’s instigation, he fired his long-time lapdog Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa, the generals with whom he’d colluded for decades turned on him. A <em>coup petit</em> ensued and returned Mnangagwa from exile, soon to be elevated to the presidency and heavily indebted to his comrades.</p>
<p>Where did Mugabe gain his proclivity for factionalism? And how did he learn to speak the language all wanted to hear – only to make them realise they had been deluded in the end? </p>
<h2>The beginning</h2>
<p>Mugabe and many other Zimbabwean nationalists were jailed in 1964. Ian Smith was preparing for the Unilateral Declaration of Independence, and the first nationalist party had split into Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union and Ndabaningi Sithole’s Zanu. Mugabe had been Nkomo’s Publicity Secretary. </p>
<p>As far back as 1962, Mugabe was registering on the global scales: Salisbury’s resident British diplomat <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9781137543448#aboutAuthors">thought Mugabe was</a> “a sinister figure” heading up a youthful “Zimbabwean Liberation Army … the more extreme wing of Zapu”. </p>
<p>But almost as soon as Mugabe was imprisoned, a man in her majesty’s employ travelled down from his advisory post in newly free Zambia to visit the prisoner. Dennis Grennan returned to Lusaka having <a href="http://archive.kubatana.net/html/archive/opin/080120dm.asp?sector=OPIN&year=2008&range_start=571">promised</a> to look after Mugabe’s wife Sarah, known as “Sally”. Grennan and people like Julius Nyerere’s British friend and assistant <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3518465.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A4d7659d7e9f1b2a3dd3124c9a249a47c">Joan Wicken</a> played an important role in Mugabe’s rise. </p>
<p>The Zimbabwean nationalists emerged from Salisbury’s prisons late in 1974, as Portugal’s coup led to Angola and Mozambique emerging from colonialism into the Soviet orbit. The fifties generation of Zimbabwean nationalists were to participate in the Zambian and South African inspired détente <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1975/03/25/archives/mr-vorsters-detente.html">exercise</a>. This inspired much competition for Zanu’s leadership: Mugabe arrived in Lusaka after ousting Ndabaningi Sithole, Zanu’s first leader. </p>
<p>Samora Machel, freshly in Mozambique’s top office, wondered if Mugabe’s quick rise was due to a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40201256.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A1d1f7a14b762adff6a6007321af29132">“coup in prison”</a>. Herbert Chitepo’s March 1975 <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3557400.pdf">assassination </a> (which got many of Zanu’s leaders arrested and its army kicked out of Zambia) was only one marker of the many fissures in the fractious party that by 1980 would rule Zimbabwe.</p>
<p>In late 1975 the <a href="https://www.pindula.co.zw/Vashandi_"><em>vashandi</em></a> group emerged within the Zimbabwean People’s Army. Based in Mozambique’s guerrilla camps, they tried to forge unity between Zimbabwe’s two main nationalist armies and push a left-wing agenda. They were profoundly unsure of Mugabe’s suitability for <a href="https://nehandaradio.com/2016/08/08/heroes-day-review-dzino-memories-freedom-fighter/">leadership</a>.</p>
<p>When Mugabe found his way to Mozambique also in late 1975, Machel put him under house arrest in Quelimane, far from the guerrilla camps. In January Grennan helped him to London to visit a hospitalised Sally. He made contacts around Europe and with a few <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/03057078008708020">London-based Maoists</a>.</p>
<p>Soon after Mugabe’s return the young American congressman Stephen Solarz and the Deputy Head of the American embassy in Maputo, Johnnie Carson, wended their way to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2014.956499">Quelimane</a>. Mugabe wowed them.</p>
<p>Solarz and Carson reported back that Mugabe was “an impressive, articulate and extremely confident individual” with a “philosophical approach to problems and … well reasoned arguments”. He claimed to control the “people’s army”. Yet by January 1977, he persuaded Samora Machel to imprison the young advocates of unity with Zapu. His many reasons included their initial refusal to support him at a late 1976 conference in Geneva organised by the British, helped immeasurably by Henry Kissinger, the American Secretary of State. </p>
<p>At a hastily called congress in March 1977 to consecrate his ascension, Mugabe uttered his leitmotif: those appearing to attempt a change to the party’s leadership by “maliciously planting contradictions within our ranks” would be struck by the <a href="http://www.aluka.org/action/showMetadata?doi=10.5555/AL.SFF.DOCUMENT.nuzn197707">“the Zanu axe”</a>.</p>
<p>This was Mugabe’s strategy, embedded at an early stage: tell foreign emissaries what they wanted to hear, use young radicals (or older allies) until their usefulness subsided, and then get rid of them. All the while he would balance the other forces contending for power in the party amid a general climate of fear, distrust, and paranoia. </p>
<h2>Dealing with dissent</h2>
<p>It is not certain if Margaret Thatcher knew about this side of Mugabe when they met less than a month after his April 1980 inauguration. He seemed most worried about how Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu – which he had dumped from the erstwhile “Patriotic Front”, and the violence against which had put Zimbabwe’s election in some doubt – was making life difficult for the new rulers. He <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2016.1214116">warned</a> that he might have “to act against them soon”.</p>
<p>In as much as Zapu was linked with the South African ANC and Thatcher and her colleagues tended to think the ANC was controlled by the South African Communist Party, Zapu intelligence chief <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-tribute-to-zimbabwean-liberation-hero-dumiso-dabengwa-117986">Dumiso Dabengwa’s</a> perspective might be more than conspiracy theory. Perhaps Thatcher’s wink and nudge was a green light for the anti-Soviet contingent to eliminate a regional threat. Gukurahundi <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2017.1309561">followed</a>. It was certainly the biggest blot on Mugabe’s career and created the biggest scar over Zimbabwe. The scar is still there, given the lack of any effort at reconcialitation, truth, or justice.</p>
<p>Four years later the ruling party’s first real congress since 1963 reviewed its history. Mugabe tore the Zipa/Vashandi group that had annoyed him eight years before to shreds. “Treacherous … counter-revolutionary … arms caching … dubbed us all <em>zvigananda</em> or bourgeois”. Thus it “became imperative for us to firmly act against them in defending the Party and the Revolution… We had all the trouble-makers detained”. </p>
<p>The great helmsman recounted the youthful dissenters’ arrest and repeated the axe phraseology. </p>
<p>But few saw these sides of Mugabe’s character soon enough; those who did were summarily shut up. </p>
<h2>The end</h2>
<p>After he’d been ousted, Mugabe could only look on in seeming despair over the ruination he had created. Sanctimonious as ever he wondered how his successor, current President Emmerson Mnangagwa, had become such an ogre. At his 95th birthday, February 21 2019, a few weeks after Mnangagwa’s troops had killed 17 demonstrators, raped as many women, and beaten hundreds more in the wake of his beleaguered finance minister’s methods to create <a href="https://theconversation.com/fantasy-that-mnangagwa-would-fix-zimbabwe-now-fully-exposed-110197">“prosperity from austerity”</a>, Mugabe <a href="https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-national-byo-156949.html">mused to his absent successor</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We condemn the violence on civilians by soldiers … You can’t do without seeing dead bodies? What kind of a person are you? You feed on death? </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He only had to look into his own history to see what kind of people he helped create.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121596/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David B. Moore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Robert Mugabe’s years of playing one group off against the other to favour himself finally wore too thin in 2017.David B. Moore, Professor of Development Studies, University of Johannesburg, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1081032019-09-06T05:39:36Z2019-09-06T05:39:36ZRobert Mugabe: as divisive in death as he was in life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291235/original/file-20190906-175663-u64qs1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Robert Mugabe during his swearing-in ceremony in Harare, 2008. The former Zimbabwean president has died aged 95.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Robert Mugabe, the former president of Zimbabwe, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/09/06/377714687/robert-mugabe-veteran-president-of-zimbabwe-dead-at-95">has died</a>. Mugabe was 95, and had been struggling with ill health for some time. The country’s current President Emmerson Mnangagwa announced Mugabe’s death on Twitter on September 6:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1169839308406054912"}"></div></p>
<p>The responses to Mnangagwa’s announcement were immediate and widely varied. Some hailed Mugabe as a liberation hero. Others dismissed him as a “monster”. This suggests that Mugabe will be as divisive a figure in death as he was in life.</p>
<p>The official mantra of the Zimbabwe government and its Zimbabwe African National Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) will emphasise his leadership of the struggle to overthrow <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ian-Smith">Ian Smith’s</a> racist settler regime in what was then Rhodesia. It will also extol his subsequent championing of the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00358530500082916">seizure of white-owned farms</a> and the return of land into African hands.</p>
<p>In contrast, critics will highlight how – after initially <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt24hd4n.7?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">preaching racial reconciliation</a> after the liberation war in <a href="http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Rhodesian_Bush_War">December 1979 </a> – Mugabe threw away the promise of the early independence years. He did this in several ways, among them a <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false">brutal clampdown</a> on political opposition in <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false">Matabeleland in the 1980s</a>, and Zanu-PF’s systematic <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-are-elections-really-rigged-mr-trump-consult-robert-mugabe-68440">rigging of elections</a> to keep he and his cronies in power. </p>
<p>They’ll also mention the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321704136_The_Curse_Of_Corruption_In_Zimbabwe">massive corruption</a> over which he presided, and the <a href="https://www.cgdev.org/publication/costs-and-causes-zimbabwes-crisis">economy’s disastrous downward plunge</a> during his presidency.</p>
<p>Inevitably, the focus will primarily be on his domestic record. Yet many of those who will sing his praises as a <a href="https://allafrica.com/stories/201709220815.html">hero of African nationalism</a> will be from elsewhere on the continent. So where should we place Mugabe among the pantheon of African nationalists who led their countries to independence?</p>
<h2>Slide into despotism</h2>
<p>Most African countries have been independent of colonial rule for <a href="https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/august-2010/weighing-half-century-independence">half a century or more</a>.</p>
<p>The early African nationalist leaders were often regarded as gods at independence. Yet they very quickly came to be perceived as having feet of very heavy clay.</p>
<p>Nationalist leaders symbolised African freedom and liberation. But few were to prove genuinely tolerant of democracy and diversity. One party rule, nominally in the name of “the people”, became widespread. In some cases, it was linked to interesting experiments in one-party democracy, as seen in Tanzania under Julius Nyerere and Zambia under Kenneth Kaunda. </p>
<p>Even in these cases, intolerance and authoritarianism <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/doorenspleet/opd/">eventually encroached</a>.
Often, party rule was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/159875?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">succeeded by military coups</a>.</p>
<p>In Zimbabwe’s case, Mugabe proved unable to shift the country, as he had wished, to one-partyism. However, this did not prevent Zanu-PF becoming increasingly intolerant over the years in response to both economic crisis and rising opposition. Successive elections were shamelessly perverted. </p>
<p>When, despite this, <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2012-08-10-00-zim-2008-election-taken-by-a-gun-not-a-pen">Zanu-PF lost control of parliament</a> in 2008, it responded by rigging the presidential election in a campaign of unforgivable brutality. Under Mugabe, the potential for democracy was snuffed out by a brutal despotism.</p>
<h2>A wasted inheritance</h2>
<p>Whether the economic policies they pursued were ostensibly capitalist or socialist, the early African nationalist leaders presided over <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/poldev/78">rapid economic decline</a>, following an initial period of relative prosperity after independence. </p>
<p>In retrospect, it’s widely recognised that the challenges they faced were immense. Most post-colonial economies were underdeveloped and depended upon the export of a small number of agricultural or mineral commodities. From the 1970s, growth was crowded out by the International Monetary Fund demanding that mounting debts be surmounted through the pursuit of <a href="https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/structural-adjustment/">structural adjustment programmes</a>. This hindered spending on infrastructure as well as <a href="http://www.globalissues.org/article/3/structural-adjustment-a-major-cause-of-poverty">social services and education</a> and swelled political discontent.</p>
<p>In contrast, Mugabe inherited a viable, relatively broad-based economy that included substantial industrial and prosperous commercial agricultural sectors. Even though these were largely white controlled, there was far greater potential for development than in most other post-colonial African countries. </p>
<p>But, through massive corruption and mismanagement, his government threw that potential away. He also presided over a disastrous downward spiral of the economy, which saw both industry and <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/a-seized-zimbabwe-farm-is-returned-but-uncertainty-reigns-20180301">commercial agriculture collapse</a>. The economy has never recovered and remains in a state of acute and persistent crisis today.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/zimbabwes-economy-is-collapsing-why-mnangagwa-doesnt-have-the-answers-104960">Zimbabwe's economy is collapsing: why Mnangagwa doesn't have the answers</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Reputation</h2>
<p>On the political front, the rule of some leaders – like <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/milton-obotes-lasting-legacy-to-uganda/a-19191275">Milton Obote in Uganda</a> and <a href="https://sites.tufts.edu/atrocityendings/2015/08/07/somalia-fall-of-siad-barre-civil-war/">Siad Barre in Somalia</a> – created so much conflict that coups and crises drove their countries into civil war. Zimbabwe under Mugabe was spared this fate – but perhaps only because the political opposition in Matabeleland in the 1980s was so brutalised after up to <a href="https://theconversation.com/british-policy-towards-zimbabwe-during-matabeleland-massacre-licence-to-kill-81574">30 000 people were killed</a>, that they shrank from more conflict. Peace, then, was merely the absence of outright war.</p>
<p>Some leaders, notably Ghana’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kwame-Nkrumah">Kwame Nkrumah</a> and <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/former-tanzanian-president-julius-nyerere-dies">Julius Nyerere</a> in Tanzania, are still revered for their commitments to national independence and African unity. This is despite the fact that, domestically, their records were marked by failure. By 1966, when Nkrumah was <a href="https://www.eaumf.org/ejm-blog/2018/2/23/february-24-1966-dr-kwame-nkrumah-overthrown-as-president-of-the-republic-of-ghana">displaced by a military coup</a>, his one-party rule had become politically corrupt and repressive. </p>
<p>Despite this, Nyerere always retained his reputation for personal integrity and commitment to African development. Both Nkrumah’s and Nyerere’s ideas continue to inspire younger generations of political activists, while other post-independence leaders’ names are largely forgotten.</p>
<p>Will Mugabe be similarly feted by later generations? Will the enormous flaws of his rule be forgotten amid celebrations of his unique role in the liberation of southern Africa as a whole? </p>
<h2>A Greek tragedy</h2>
<p>The problem for pan-Africanist historians who rush to praise Mugabe is that they will need to repudiate the contrary view of the millions of Zimbabweans who have suffered under his rule or have fled the country to escape it. He contributed no political ideas that have lasted. He inherited the benefits as well as the costs of settler rule but reduced his country to penury. He destroyed the best of its institutional inheritance, notably an efficient civil service, which could have been put to good use for all.</p>
<p>The cynics would say that the reputation of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/patrice-emery-lumumba">Patrice Lumumba</a>, as an African revolutionary and fighter for Congolese unity has lasted because he was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jan/17/patrice-lumumba-50th-anniversary-assassination">assassinated in 1961</a>. In other words, he had the historical good fortune to die young, without the burden of having made major and grievous mistakes.</p>
<p>In contrast, there are many who would say that Mugabe simply lived too long, and his life was one of Greek tragedy: his early promise and virtue marked him out as popular hero, but he died a monster whom history will condemn.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108103/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Southall receives funding from the National Research Foundation </span></em></p>Where should we place Mugabe among the pantheon of African nationalists who led their countries to independence?Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1227262019-09-05T09:02:06Z2019-09-05T09:02:06ZZimbabwe’s deepening crisis: time for second government of national unity?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290911/original/file-20190904-175686-v3skdk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many Zimbabweans have turned to hawking to keep the wolf from the door as the economic crisis in the country deepens. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Zimbabwe is going through its worst socio-economic and political crisis in two decades. Crippling daily power outages of <a href="https://www.biznews.com/africa/2019/08/05/zimbabwe-tipping-point-economic-crisis">up to 18 hours</a> and erratic supply of clean water are just some of the most obvious signs. Meanwhile, an inflation rate of over 500% has put the prices of basic goods beyond the reach of most people.</p>
<p>Hopes that the end of President Robert Mugabe’s ruinous rule in November 2017 would help put the country on a new path of peace and prosperity have long <a href="https://theconversation.com/fantasy-that-mnangagwa-would-fix-zimbabwe-now-fully-exposed-110197">dissipated</a>. Efforts by his successor President Emmerson Mnangagwa to <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/zimbabwe-is-open-for-business-says-mnangagwa-12913367">attract foreign investors</a>, who are critical in reviving Zimbabwe’s ailing economy, have also largely failed.</p>
<p>The situation has not been helped by the rejection of the 2018 presidential election results by the main opposition party. The Movement for Democratic Change Alliance (MDC-A) claims the governing Zanu-PF stole the elections even though the results were <a href="https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/news/africa/Regional-observers-Zimbabwe-election-free-and-fair/4552902-4692254-e75fje/index.html">endorsed</a> as free and fair by the African Union and Southern African Development Community (SADC). Only the European Union observers were somewhat circumspect <a href="https://www.news24.com/Africa/Zimbabwe/eu-observers-say-zimbabwe-election-fell-short-on-fairness-20181010">in their assessment</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fantasy-that-mnangagwa-would-fix-zimbabwe-now-fully-exposed-110197">Fantasy that Mnangagwa would fix Zimbabwe now fully exposed</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The opposition alliance has been calling for Mnangagwa’s government to relinquish power, and a <a href="https://www.openparly.co.zw/chamisa-calls-for-national-trasitional-authority/">national transitional authority</a> appointed to run the country for at least two years, or until the 2023 general elections.</p>
<p>How individuals who will sit on the national transitional authority will be chosen and by whom, is not clear. But the party and <a href="https://www.theindependent.co.zw/2019/03/01/towards-the-national-transitional-authority/">some academics</a> believe such a transitional authority would normalise Zimbabwe’s highly polarised political situation and help it revive its relations with the West.</p>
<p>The opposition may have a point on re-engagement with the West. This is key to helping end the investment drought that started in earnest <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.908.3003&rep=rep1&type=pdf">between 2000 and 2003</a> under sanctions imposed by Western countries for human rights violations linked to Zanu-PF’s violent land reform seizures and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jun/03/zimbabwe.andrewmeldrum">election rigging</a>.</p>
<p>But the transitional authority idea is doomed to fail because of lack of buy-in by Zanu-PF. So, it’s time to consider a more viable alternative path to peace for Zimbabwe.</p>
<h2>Clamping down</h2>
<p>For now, the government has dismissed talk of a transitional authority as unconstitutional. Instead, in May it launched its own platform, called the <a href="https://www.panafricanvisions.com/2019/zimbabwe-mnangagwa-launches-the-political-actors-dialogue-to-address-long-term-economic-challenges/">Political Actors Dialogue</a>. The forum comprises 17 small political parties that participated in the 2018 elections. </p>
<p>The main opposition party is boycotting the process on grounds that Mnangagwa is an illegitimate president. Recently, it attempted to <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi-gdPunLfkAhXfSBUIHdWZCeIQFjAEegQIBBAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Fworld-africa-49366224&usg=AOvVaw0fkr2f1y4BV0-4W2SlJHGY">embark on public protests</a> in the hope of bringing the government to its knees. The protests fell flat after being blocked by the courts and the police.</p>
<p>It boggles the mind why the MDC-A, led by Nelson Chamisa, insists on marches when previous attempts were crushed with brute force. These led to deaths in <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=21&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwingbiQ87TkAhVsZhUIHWexAsIQFjAUegQICBAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.news24.com%2FAfrica%2FZimbabwe%2Fzimbabwean-generals-deny-troops-shot-and-killed-6-protesters-20181113&usg=AOvVaw02nyk1uLwat64nJso2EImF">August 2018</a> and <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwicyIfl87TkAhV9SBUIHXzrAC4QFjAAegQIAhAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmg.co.za%2Farticle%2F2019-01-30-zim-army-responsible-for-murders-rapes-report&usg=AOvVaw1fiTJ2kraC9xNiMyQ4TBM6">January 2019</a>. </p>
<p>The Zanu-PF regime has always clamped down heavily on perceived threats to its rule since 1980. Why then does the MDC-A continue to endanger people’s lives through this deadly route as a way of resolving Zimbabwe’s socio-economic and political crises?</p>
<p>I firmly believe that the opposition needs to change tack and focus on entering into dialogue with the government. </p>
<h2>Dialogue and unity government</h2>
<p>Zimbabwe’s ongoing crisis requires the two leading political protagonists - Mnangagwa and Chamisa - to enter into serious dialogue. Both leaders need to soften their hard-line stances towards each other and put the people of Zimbabwe first.</p>
<p>There’s a precedent for this. Ten years ago, then South African President Thabo Mbeki managed to bring then President Mugabe and Movement for Democratic Change opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to the <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=11&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiMheeVnrfkAhVXShUIHeBIDw04ChAWMAB6BAgAEAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.france24.com%2Fen%2F20080721-mbeki-harare-mediate-talks-zimbabwe-political-crisis&usg=AOvVaw2pLPeTVwBEVrH2TSAcW5e3">negotiation table</a>. </p>
<p>The talks culminated in the formation of the government of national unity that ran Zimbabwe from February 2009 to July 2013, with Mugabe as the President and Tsvangirai as the Prime Minister. The unity government was fairly successful and managed to <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=10&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiv9PjanrfkAhUUTBUIHQR0D0cQFjAJegQIABAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theindependent.co.zw%2F2013%2F07%2F11%2Freflecting-on-positive-zimbabwe-gnu-moments%2F&usg=AOvVaw25plQQHFWt-5PTjI9_Fi6J">stabilise the economy</a>.</p>
<p>Two decades of suffering have shown that it is not the threat of protests or sanctions from the West that can move Zanu-PF to change, but neighbouring countries under the aegis of <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=11&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwia1fucj7HkAhWnRhUIHcY8Dvc4ChAWMAB6BAgAEAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Flibrary.fes.de%2Fpdf-files%2Fbueros%2Fmosambik%2F07874.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2PSzn2eTrgI53Cnw2yrI2t">SADC</a>. South Africa is pivotal in this regard as the region’s strongest economic and military power. </p>
<p>It’s time to experiment with a second government of national unity for Zimbabwe. But for this to happen, SADC and South Africa must have the appetite to intervene in Zimbabwe. This is currently lacking. </p>
<h2>Dialogue in Zimbabwe’s history</h2>
<p>Historically, dialogue has moved Zimbabwe forward as a nation during its darkest hours. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>A year before independence in 1980, battle-hardened guerrilla commanders agreed to talk to the then Rhodesian Prime Minister, Ian Smith, to end Zimbabwe’s liberation war even though they were convinced that they were winning. </p></li>
<li><p>In 1987 Joshua Nkomo, who was the leader of the main opposition party, the Zimbabwean African People’s Union, agreed to talk to his political nemesis, then Prime Minister Mugabe. Yet before this, he had been hounded out of the country by Mugabe in the mid-80s, and <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=zi-tWekXbD8C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=%22the+early+rain+which+washes+away+the+chaff+before+the+spring+rains%22&source=bl&ots=dWX2SIUj7r&sig=0aDLpmmQfN93e_RNJuKcBmGGEYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwioi-joj6LWAhWE7hoKHRF_C7wQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q=%22the%20early%20rain%20which%20washes%20away%20the%20chaff%20before%20the%20spring%20rains%22&f=false">thousands of his supporters killed</a>. </p></li>
<li><p>More recently in 2009, Morgan Tsvangirai agreed to enter into a unity government with Mugabe, despite winning the first round of the <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2012-08-10-00-zim-2008-election-taken-by-a-gun-not-a-pen">2008 elections</a>. The unity government briefly resuscitated and stabilised Zimbabwe’s fragile economy. Hyperinflation was tamed, basic commodities became available again and people regained purchasing power.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>The way forward</h2>
<p>Given the MDC-A’s positive contribution during its brief stint in the 2009-2013 unity government, the party should be expending its energies on dialogue. The main opposition party can enter into a second government of national unity, but continue building and strengthening its own support.</p>
<p>In the same vein, Zanu-PF also needs to realise that without the involvement of the MDC-A, its attempts to revive the economy and end the strife in the country, on its own terms, are destined to fail.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122726/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tapiwa Chagonda has previously received funding from the National Research Foundation (NRF). </span></em></p>It’s time for a new approach as it becomes increasingly clear that protests won’t topple the Zanu-PF government.Tapiwa Chagonda, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/718152017-01-29T16:40:33Z2017-01-29T16:40:33ZTrump’s ‘America first’ pledge has echoes of Rhodesia’s racist white nationalists<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154202/original/image-20170125-23858-jxjcvx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">US President Donald Trump stamped his inaugural speech with the promise of 'America First' -- a slogan with an ominous past. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Kevin Lamarque</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/20/trumps-inaugural-address-was-demonstrably-bleak/">bleak inauguration speech</a> has attracted attention for, among other things, employing the phrase “America first”. </p>
<p>The term was popularised by the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/america-first-for-charles-lindbergh-and-donald-trump">famed aviator Charles Lindbergh</a> and is associated with anti-Semitic and Nazi sympathisers who sought to keep the US out of World War II. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/trump-america-first/514037/">Lindbergh and the America First Committee</a> are not the only 20th century white nationalists to use the term. The small band of racist whites in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, employed a version of it as protest against the onset of decolonisation and the spread of black rule across Africa. </p>
<p>In the late 1950s, <a href="http://www.bbm.org.uk/airmen/Harper.htm">William J. Harper</a>, who was also known for his daring aviation exploits in World War II, made waves by using the slogan </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Rhodesia first, last, and always.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A few years later, Harper struck one of the most dramatic blows for white supremacy as a signatory to Rhodesia’s <a href="https://global.britannica.com/topic/Unilateral-Declaration-of-Independence">Unilateral Declaration of Independence</a>. He served as Minister of Internal Affairs in the first cabinet of Prime Minister Ian Smith. Smith famously vowed that the tiny white minority would rule for <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1569980/Ian-Smith-Man-whose-folly-unleashed-Mugabe.html">1 000 years</a>.</p>
<p>But when Harper first popularised the slogan, which was generally shortened to “Rhodesia first”, he was leading the opposition Dominion Party. The party sought full independence from British rule. It was also at the vanguard of resistance against any movement for reform or genuine integration between settlers and colonial subjects. </p>
<p>The term was particularly controversial as Southern Rhodesia was then governed within the larger <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/federation-rhodesia-and-nyasaland-collapses">Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland</a>. This also included contemporary Zambia and Malawi. By advocating for Southern Rhodesian primacy, Harper not only made it clear that he was opposed to majority rule, but also to the federal structure of governance to which Southern Rhodesia was constitutionally bound. </p>
<p>The slogan prompted a split in 1960 between the territorial branch of the Dominion Party, of which Harper was the leader, and the federal branch, led by Winston Field, who became Southern Rhodesia’s prime minister two years later. Field was subsequently booted aside in 1964 for being too moderate. </p>
<h2>Echoes of an inglorious past</h2>
<p>Harper and his far-right allies sought to appeal to the white Rhodesian electorate by taking a stand against African liberation and the winds of change sweeping into the colony. Similarly, Donald Trump has appealed to an American electorate that feels overwhelmed by the forces of globalisation. The Trump administration’s <a href="https://kenopalo.com/2017/01/14/answers-to-some-of-team-trumps-questions-on-foreign-aid-to-africa/">sceptical approach to aid</a> in Africa and antagonism of China is a throwback to the Dominion Party’s protest against providing social services for Africans and its strident warning of a communist onslaught in newly independent countries.</p>
<p>The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/rhodesia-central-african-federation.htm">inaugurated in 1953</a> with the encouraging, albeit vague goal of promoting <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1405201">racial partnership</a> enshrined in its constitution. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1358&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1358&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154209/original/image-20170125-23840-1sc060t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1358&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Former Rhodesian PM Ian Smith.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Juda Ngwenya</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The same year, the moderate, albeit highly paternalistic missionary <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/oct/14/guardianobituaries.obituaries1">Garfield Todd</a> became Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia’s territorial government. (The Federal government was led by the vastly more conservative Godfrey Huggins who reportedly defined “partnership” in the sense of a <a href="http://www.thepatriot.co.zw/old_posts/godfrey-huggins-partnership-of-horse-and-rider-zimbabweans-must-be-vigilant/">horse and its rider</a>.)</p>
<p>The country’s violent liberation struggle of the 1970s, which saw about 20,000 deaths as the whites refused to accept majority rule, seemed a distant prospect at the time.</p>
<p>But the Federation dissolved in 1963 and the southward march of independence, particularly the chaotic transfer of authority in the Belgian Congo, rapidly radicalised the small white population. Much as Trump promised to his followers the security of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38740717">a wall on the Mexican border</a>, whites in southern Africa saw the Zambezi river on Zimbabwe’s northern border as <a href="https://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2013/07/26/the-1962-state-department-paper-the-white-redoubt-demonstrates-myriad-of-problems-with-crafting-policy-towards-apartheid-era-south-africa/">a fortress</a> to protect what they called “responsible government” and <a href="http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/23rd-august-1975/9/rhodesia-1%22">“civilised standards”</a>.</p>
<p>In 1962 the Dominion Party merged with several smaller conservative parties to form the Rhodesian Front. In the elections that December, the Front, like Trump, defied popular predictions and emerged to <a href="https://www.revolvy.com/main/index.php?s=Southern%20Rhodesian%20general%20election,%201962">form the next government</a>. The Front set about increasing its stranglehold on the government and engaged in widespread censorship of the media. No candidate running on the all-white voter’s roll was ever able to defeat it.</p>
<p>Its key strategy was to position itself as the lone guarantor of white security. A propaganda pamphlet – Rhodesia and You in the Super 70s, available at the University of York’s <a href="https://www.york.ac.uk/borthwick/holdings/what-we-hold/southern-african/">Borthwick Institute</a> – proudly stated, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>In 1962 the people of Rhodesia made their historic decision to stand and fight on the Zambezi; this was in contradistinction to existing trends of surrender and appeasement to the evils of pan-Africanism. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In 1965 the small band of Rhodesians defied world trends and declared their <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/11/newsid_2658000/2658445.stm">own independence</a> from British rule. Harper, Smith and 10 other white men signed the declaration. Its opening lines contained many similarities of both syntax and content to that of the United States’. Both referred to an “entitlement of separate and equal” rights that were in reality only accorded to a minority.</p>
<h2>The past in the present</h2>
<p>While Trump may not be directly inspired by white Rhodesian political strategy, many white American nationalists are. The Charleston church shooter, Dylann Roof, a young white supremacist, posed for pictures while <a href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/dylann-roof-charleston-shooting-suspect-had-rhodesia-south-africa-apartheid-jacket-1506881">wearing apparel</a> with the Rhodesian flag. He <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/website-surfaces-with-disturbing-photos-and-manifesto-purportedly-written-by-dylann-roof">owned a website</a> with the url lastrhodesian.com. According to the <a href="http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=801">historian Gerald Horne</a>, hundreds, if not thousands of white Americans, served as mercenaries in the Rhodesian military in the 1970s.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154207/original/image-20170125-23862-ubx4dh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dylann Roof with Rhodesian and apartheid South Africa flags.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Harper and Trump’s political careers share another crucial similarity. Both were dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct. While The Donald has been able to deflect the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/20/donald-trump-sexual-misconduct-tenth-woman-accuser">claims against him</a>, Harper was forced to resign from the Rhodesian cabinet in 1968 over claims of an affair with his secretary, a reputed British agent.</p>
<p>As Trump tweets with the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/822502450007515137">#AmericaFirst</a>, he may not be aware of the Rhodesian antecedent of the term. But it seems to be no coincidence that his campaign tone is not out of line with the sentiments of Harper and Rhodesia’s white nationalists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71815/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brooks Marmon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Rhodesia’s white supremacists appealed to the white electorate by taking a stand against African liberation. Similarly, Donald Trump appealed to white Americans who feel overwhelmed by globalisation.Brooks Marmon, PhD Student, Centre of African Studies, The University of EdinburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.