Table Of ContentAFRICAN HISTORIES
AND MODERNITIES
Robert Mugabe and
the Will to Power in an
African Postcolony
William J. Mpofu
African Histories and Modernities
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The University of Texas at Austin
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Virginia Tech
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William J. Mpofu
Robert Mugabe and
the Will to Power in
an African Postcolony
William J. Mpofu
Wits Centre for Diversity Studies
University of the Witwatersrand
Johannesburg, South Africa
African Histories and Modernities
ISBN 978-3-030-47878-0 ISBN 978-3-030-47879-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47879-7
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To the memory of Joseph William Mpofu, a father, teacher and priest.
A
cknowledgements
I acknowledge the support of Professor Melissa Steyn, Dr Haley McEwen
and the entire Wits Centre for Diversity Studies team whose collegiality is
always intellectually nourishing. Professor Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni,
Umdala wami, Professor Morgan Ndlovu, Professor Siphamandla Zondi,
Dr Blessed Ngwenya, Dr Brian Sibanda and the entire Africa Decolonial
Research Network (ADERN) were monumentally supportive. Professor
Tawana Kupe, Professor Mucha Musemwa, Professor Garth Stevens and
Professor Ruksana Osman were encouraging and supportive of my efforts.
I must thank my friend Julius Joshua Kivuna for his interest in my work
and vast knowledge of Africa and the world. The staff at Barcelos restau-
rant in Sunnyside, Pretoria, kept up with a strange man that insisted on
colonising the tables at the corner with his books, and for watching over
my table while I took walking and pipe-smoking breaks, pondering
Mugabe, sometimes very late into the South African nights.
My many friends and family were pillars of support. Kagame Mbiko,
Mkhosana Mathobela, Siphosami Mazanemvula, Bathabile, Simphiwe and
Langalami Dinizulu endured my absences in peace. Cetshwayo Babongiwe
gave me hearty good wishes. John Mbongeni Mpofu stood in for me
where I could not avail myself. Mavusani Mpofu kept me on my toes and
read some of my drafts.
vii
c
ontents
1 The Birth of the Symptom in the Postcolony 1
2 The Will to Power in the Postcolony 53
3 The Inventions of Robert Mugabe 113
4 When the Monsters Go Marching In: Mugabe the
Production and Its Spectacles 171
5 A Career of Madness: Performances of the Will to Power 225
6 The Return of the Symptom in the Postcolony 305
References 345
Index 361
ix
CHAPTER 1
The Birth of the Symptom in the Postcolony
Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a
monster … for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also
into you.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1968: 112)
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new
cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid
symptoms appear.
—Antonio Gramsci (1971: 275–276)
It should be borne in mind that there is nothing more difficult to
manage, or more doubtful of success, or more dangerous to handle than
to take the lead in introducing a new order of things. For the innovator
has enemies in all those who are doing well under the old order, and he
has lukewarm defenders in all those who would do well under the
new order.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (2003a: 25)
That the story of Robert Mugabe and his will to power will continue to
arrest the attention of the world, long after his loss of power and death,
cannot be doubted. What can be doubted is if the true meaning of Mugabe
will be established. In life and in death, in political intrigue and spectacle,
Mugabe stole the attention of the world. In his time Mugabe did not only
become one of the oldest leaders in the world but also one of the most
watched political actors. Whether he was lyrically pronouncing forgiveness
© The Author(s) 2021 1
W. J. Mpofu, Robert Mugabe and the Will to Power in an African
Postcolony, African Histories and Modernities,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47879-7_1
2 W. J. MPOFU
for white Rhodesians at Zimbabwe’s independence or declaring war on
the political opposition Mugabe was a spectacle. Journalists, scholars and
movie makers are still to feed fat on the story of the life and times of
Robert Mugabe the Zimbabwean strongman whose ultimate strength
finally became his defeating weakness. Mugabe filled the Zimbabwean
political landscape with spectacular political performances that made the
country a historical site for intriguing political spectacles and all sorts of
alarming experiments. Perceptive journalists such as Heidi Holland (2008)
have understood and circulated the Mugabe tale as “the untold story of a
freedom fighter who became a tyrant.” Similarly, committed human rights
activists and liberals such as Michael Auret (2009) have lamented the tran-
sition of Mugabe from “liberator to dictator.” Self-confessed adventure
seekers and bored travel writers such as Douglass Rogers (2019) have
treated the story of Mugabe and his fall from the graces of power as an
entertaining thriller of plots and conspiracies by some brave securocrats,
patriotic exiles and angry veterans of Zimbabwe’s war of liberation from
colonialism. In this book I lament the untruth that has widely and much
misleadingly been circulated by some journalists and scholars. The false-
hood that there was ever a hero and liberator in Mugabe conceals the
original political desires and fears that drove Mugabe’s will to power. “The
Man” as Mugabe frequently referred to himself (Matyszak 2015) became
possessed of a spirited will to power that was a combination of fears of
weakness and desires for power. The love for power combined with a fear
of weakness makes a man mad. Mugabe’s will to power, that made him the
ultimate political animal, a tyrant, was always concealed behind myths of
gallant nationalism, pretences to undying Pan-Africanism and dramatisa-
tions of liberation heroism. In this book I attempt to separate the Mugabe
of veracity, the thing itself, from Mugabe the actor and performer of things
heroic, gallant and great. I seek to recover the true Mugabe from the
debris of the many myths, shadows and performances of himself that he
scattered around. From a socially vulnerable young boy to the strongman
who built a reputation for muscular anti-imperialism and robust Africanism
Mugabe spiritedly sought, found and kept power by any means necessary
and some means truly unnecessary as I demonstrate in this book.
In Zimbabwe, Mugabe is remembered by the larger part of the popula-
tion as a genocidist tyrant that reduced a “jewel of Africa” to a failed state
that produced the country into a skunk of the world. Yet, thanks to his
anti-colonial slogans and long harangues of speeches against western
imperialism in Africa, Mugabe is largely held by the rest of the African
