Embalmed Mugabe to Go At Last

It looks increasingly likely that President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, the only national leader to remain in power whilst slowly being embalmed, may at last be thrown out of office.
The news reached Nosher and me on our little allotment late one sunny spring afternoon, and found us in pensive mood.
'For a man who is now in his 80s, Mugabe has surprisingly taut skin on his cheeks' remarked Nosher.
'That's the effect of the embalming fluid' I said. 'He's so vain he's been having the stuff injected ever since he came to power in 1980, and could afford his own personal embalmer.'
'Given that the content of his political speeches hasn't changed since that time you could well be right!' Nosher chuckled.
As we continued preparing our respective plots of ground for planting out, I reflected upon the tragedy that is modern Zimbabwe.
As Southern Rhodesia it was the most stable and prosperous of the British colonial possessions in Africa, its black population enjoying a standard of living that quickly became a distant memory after Mugabe came to power in 1980.
Agreed, colonialism is in principle abhorrent, and should have been abolished much earlier. But the whites of Rhodesia had succeeded in forging a viable and largely humane (although discriminatory) state out of the scrub and bush that otherwise would have been unproductive.
This all changed when Mugabe came to power. When the negotiations with the British were taking place in the late 70s his propaganda machine represented him as a devout Catholic (a worrying characteristic in any person who likes killing others), a learned and cultured man who would be an asset as the new leader of Zimbabwe. But as soon as Mugabe was confirmed in office his ego, greed, and vanity took over, along with the effects of the embalming fluid, and he created a ruthless police state centred around his insatiable appetite for wealth and dominance.
Zimbabwe may have claimed to be a democracy, but it was always rigged. The fact that the Electoral Commission is now the midwife to a transfer of power indicates not that democracy has arrived but that even Mugabe's own party has deserted their embalmed leader and see no point in rigging the polls anymore.
And Robert Mugabe does indeed give all the appearance of a man undergoing embalming whilst still alive (just). His political speaches have remained almost exactly the same in tone and sentiment since independence. The British are presented as the active enemy of the people of Zimbabwe, whilst Mugabe is their champion. The reverse is in fact the case, since Britain (through the UN famine relief system) helps supply the food aid required to maintain ordinary Zimbabweans just above the level of death from starvation.
Mugabe has systematically destroyed Zimbabwe's one economic strength, its agricultural system, so that employment is now 80%, and the inflation rate is 100,000% and rising rapidly. Agricultural production is now almost zero, in the most fertile country in Africa. Schools, hospitals, social services, transportation and almost every institution of civil society have collapsed or been corrupted, whilst the police and the military are funded very generously to ensure their loyalty to the corrupt regime. Millions of Zimbabweans are starving, and hundreds of thousands make the perilous border crossing into South Africa each year in the hope of a better life. Mugabe has truly been Zimbabwe's nemesis.
And yet there are people still singing his praises.
In South Africa Archbishop Desmond Tutu, usually a man of great wisdom, praised Mugabe for the leader that he had been (past tense deliberate). It would have been more appropriate to have shown solidarity with the millions of ordinary Zimbabweans condemned to a life of misery and deprivation as a result of Mugabe's economic incompetence and political ruthlessness.
Many of the leaders of African countries have applauded Mugabe as a great leader of liberation for blacks, whereas the truth is that he liberated them from white rule only to enslave them under the cruel anvil of black-on-black oppression. The leaders of black Africans don't like to admit that black-on-black oppression is now the source of their people's misery, preferring to support the myth that colonial whites were responsible for their suffering (which is, of course, only partly true, but partial truths are always easier to obscure).
'Maybe one day the people of Zimbabwe will be free and prosperous' muttered Nosher over on his little plot.
'That would be a welcome change' I said 'but I fear it will take many years to undo the damage Mugabe has done to his country and his people.'
From somewhere up in the trees came the unmistakable sound of a woodpecker drilling into bark.
'I wonder if Mugabe would make the same noise if a woodpecker drilled into his head' mused Nosher, still contemplating the long-term effects of embalming fluid on the living dead.
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