ROBERT MUGABE: A HYBRID HERO AND VILLAIN, DEAD AT 95 YEARS.

ICHEOKU says he outlived most of his traducers including  Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Joshua Nkomo, Ian Smith, Golda Meir and of course Morgan Tsvangirai; as well as everything they spurned and threw at him simply because he wouldn't let them control him and dictate to him how to be an obedient dutiful puppet in the country once known as Southern Rhodesia. 

They hated his guts that he could stand up and call them out for what they are, exploiters of the African continent; so they schemed and plotted to get rid of him and when they couldn't succeed, they branded him a despot, made him a pariah and completely ostracized him from the comity of "civilized" nations. In their attempt to discredit and topple him, they went for the jugular of Zimbabwe economy with earth scorching policies and imposed asphyxiating sanctions aimed at bringing his government down. It was so rivetingly inhumane that a trillion Zimbabwean dollar could hardly buy a loaf of bread, where available. But he hung in tough and for over 40 years, as African longest serving dictator, until he was brought down by his inner circle army generals, under the ruse of a people's revolution in 2017. 

Bobby ranked among the topmost African leaders of note, sharing a platform with the likes of Nelson Mandela, Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere etc; his compatriots in the liberation struggle to free Africa from the clutches of their European colonial masters and their skewed vulture-like exploitative interest in Africa, where they plundered the continent in order to sustain their own continent.  As many opinion writers have said and rightly so, without African resources, Europe would have been poorer than Bangladeshi and Somalia put together. But they parasitically plugged their proboscis into African resources and with it continues to fatten their country men and women till today and to the great chagrin of the rightful African owners of those resources, who are being ravaged by great want, poverty and need; yet these Europeans pretend not to know what is fueling the Mediterranean migration from North Africa. 

Bobby emerged from the bush as leader of ZANUPF freedom fighters to become the prime minister before abolishing the office to become the president. However, he was gravely flawed as he became a sight tight dictator and committed so many atrocities against his people, including one of the worst massacres in Africa, where in a crackdown to a revolt, over 20,000 Zimbabweans of Matabeleland were murdered by his government troops led by the current President Mmanagawa, who was then chief of security and defense chief. So in a way Tucker Carlson was somewhat both right and wrong when he broad-painted Mugabe as an evil person, because his redistribution of land was a legitimate interest of Zimbabweans who owned the land and farmed it before colonial British forced them off it and expropriated them. But his patriotic fervor does not in anyway excuse the many atrocities which he committed against the people of Zimbabwe, including holding their presidency hostage.

Anyway, what legacy he left behind other than sorrow, tears and blood of Zimbabweans is however debatable; admitted that he gave the British a run for their money and outfoxed them in their various attempts to get rid of him and manipulate him out of power. Conversely, he did not leave Zimbabwe any better than he had met it, so scored a total failure in that department. He was afflicted with the disease which African leaders suffer from, lack of real love for their people and with it, no accountability and no improvement of their lives and living standards. He was ruthless, vicious and merciless in his bid to maintain power. But in the end, he turned out to be just another African leader whose time in office did not do much to help turn around the fortunes of his country men and women. 

Under his watch, there was corruption, violence, heavy handedness, lack of respect for the rule of law, abuse of power and of course a lot of blood letting by his minions, who obeyed as he commanded and sometimes, implicitly. The cruel irony of his leadership however was that he fought to liberate his people from the oppressions of the white British colonialists, but ended up himself oppressing the same people he had fought to liberate. He also did not like the British so much, but ended up stuck in their dress code, mannerisms and etiquette; as well as general suave and urbane lifestyle and way of life. Is it possible that he conned his Zimbabwean people into believing that his anti British sentiments was real or that he was nuanced about it, by liking certain things about the British while abhorring their colonialist air of superiority and arrogant condescending attitude. 

Bobby loved power and enjoyed being in power, that he once claimed that there is no alternative for Zimbabweans to Robert Mugabe. According to him, "The majority of the people feel that there is no replacement or successor, who to them is acceptable, as acceptable as I am." Like Nikolas Ceausescu of Romania who once claimed that he was the spirit of the Danube River, the power which makes it possible for it to flow, Robert Mugabe once quipped that he is Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe is him. Defiantly stating thus: “I will never, never sell my country. I will never, never, never surrender. Zimbabwe is mine, I am a Zimbabwean, Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans. 

He was a sight tight president and once stated that he will die in office. According to him, “I am not retiring. I will never, never go into exile. I fought for Zimbabwe, and when I die I will be buried in Zimbabwe, nowhere else.” Robert Mugabe seemed to have had his way as he never went into exile and now dead, will be buried in his country Zimbabwe; unlike Ugandan Idi Amin who was forced out of power and into exile and when he died, was buried in a foreign land Saudi Arabia. Unlike the now mentally depreciated Joe Biden, who usually gets his "facts and truths" mixed and mangled up, at least Robert Mugabe got two of the three assertions right, as he was not forced into exile and he will be buried in Zimbabwe.

He was a hero to his people, admitted he was ruthless and silenced any opposition; but some would rather see him as a despot just because he asked for redistribution of Zimbabweans fertile lands which colonialists had appropriated from the natives. But hey, as Nelson Mandela once rightly said, one people's terrorist is another people's hero; so to Zimbabweans, a hero is gone; while to the British and other white people like Tucker Carlson, his demise is a good riddance.

ICHEOKU says Robert Mugabe's only likely regret would be that he did not die in office, as he had wanted to stay in power "until God said come" back home. He was pushed out of power in 2017 and never fully recovered from the shock of the betrayal by his most trusted, supposed loyalists, who aborted his planned hanging unto power until God called him home. A call which finally came on Friday September 6th, 2019 while he was clinging to life in a Singaporean hospital and he answered, expired and gave up the ghost.  He had a storied life, he came from nobody to become somebody; he was highly cerebral, he was a party leader, a Prime Minister, a President; he was twice a husband, a father, a hero  of his people and lived a long healthy fulfilled life. President Robert Gabriel Mugabe died of natural causes of infirmities of old age. He was 95 years old. May his soul now rest. Adieu Bobby.