Originally published in Le Monde.
Has Robert Mugabe ever known peace? At 89 and just re-elected to a new term, his latest fight was with the Zimbabwean opposition, which he crushed on election day July 31. His defeated opponent, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, described the political event as a "sham" marked by ghost votes and lack of ballot access for over one million people. Mugabe, meanwhile, raises his middle finger to Western countries, whose protests and criticisms he is more than happy to ignore.
On a tactical level, it has been a success. If the Movement for Democratic Change, Tsvangirai's party, asks its militants to stay home to avoid repression while it awaits an appeal of the results, Mugabe will have won the way a civil war is won: without mercy, without any consideration for harm, as if it were a matter of life and death. It was only a presidential election. With Mugabe, it seems, politics is always an extension of war.
Is his aim to defend his people or his throne? Perhaps both. He will be 90 next year, and his weaknesses are increasingly noticeable. He has always carefully avoided tobacco and alcohol. His limousines, his new palace, his young wife's vulgar luxury no longer weigh on his conscience. But he cannot win the fight against aging.
Was he ever going to give up and face a dull and boring retirement? Before the general election, he told Tsvangirai that he might - and was no doubt delighted to tease this man he despises. At Mugabe's age, a man doesn't suddenly change his program, which includes not only governing Zimbabwe, but also fighting for it, even if that means using methods that aren't noble. And the fighting has long been his comfort, his cocoon. War in a time of peace has a name: violence. But Mugabe's life has been a long one, and this alone doesn't fairly characterize him.
Agitator in the making
Robert Mugabe was born in 1924 in Southern Rhodesia, a British colony that eventually became Zimbabwe. Men and women of that generation witnessed and endured incredible racial brutality. There is no way to know exactly what words may have taunted little Robert, who was a solitary bookworm and a momma's boy. His mother actually dreamed that he'd become a priest. The family lived with Catholic missionaries, so it would have been a good opportunity in a tragic era. An Irish priest, who appreciated the young boy's sharp wit, became his mentor and a sort of substitute father. He told him how the Irish fought for and won their own independence, by force, a few years earlier, against the British.
Mugabe left for the University of Fort Hare, South Africa's first college for blacks and the alma mater of some key African National Congress (ANC) members, including Nelson Mandela. He graduated, discovered Marxism and became a teacher in Ghana, where, in 1957, the first African independence of the decolonization era triumphed.
Back in Rhodesia, he became one of the agitators, and then leaders, of the guerillas demanding an end to white-minority rule. He became a political prisoner in 1963. While jailed, he studied relentlessly and took correspondence courses in economics and law from London University, from which he graduated. All told, he has seven degrees, which testify to his curiosity and thirst for knowledge. He even joked about it, adding ironically that he was also "a graduate in violence."
Imprisonment bred leadership
After more than 10 years in jail, he traveld to neighboring Mozambique and took control of the Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).
During wartime, he learned to hate the foreign media, especially the British, whose headlines often referred to him as the "Black Terrorist" - the same expression used to describe Nelson Mandela - and who adopted the white Rhodesians' characterization of him as a "Black Hitler." The expression had legs. It persisted so long, in fact, that in 2003 he used it in his own way during a speech: "If fighting for my people makes me a Hitler, then let me be 10 times a Hitler."
