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By Root 1526 0

need to bury the past and its ‘mistakes’. Smith refused Mugabe permission to visit his son–his only child–when he was ill, and when the child died he was not allowed to attend the funeral. It is sometimes argued that this was the stupidest thing Smith ever did. When Robert Mugabe came to power it was after more than a decade of war fought, as wars have to be, with brutality on both sides. The attempts on his life have isolated him, made him suspicious. Why then do people expect Robert Mugabe, with such a history, to be this combination of Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson, Gandhi? But people do expect this: Comrade Mugabe, like God, is on everybody’s side. And he does sometimes behave with magnanimity.

What has there been in Mugabe’s experience to make him admire democracy?

Yet as communism, and marxism as an idea collapses, as communist societies give up and go, it is likely that the ‘marxist’ leadership of Zimbabwe will be pleased their communism has always been more rhetoric than fact.

What will supplant marxism?

Christianity is strong in Zimbabwe, stronger than marxism ever was.

From a letter: ‘The Pope has just visited Zimbabwe. Thousands of people turned out. Don’t run away with the idea they have all become Catholics, it was all more exciting than a Party rally, that’s all, and they love parties. Comrade Mugabe was there. He said “This is like being baptized again.” Also, that he could see no conflict between Christianity and what his government stood for. At least that’s what people say he said. The newspapers didn’t report it.’

As marxism fades, the Chiefs become stronger. There are jokes that in the long run the Chiefs will turn out stronger than the Chefs. Slowly, they are getting their powers and privileges back. They are conservative, taking their stand on ‘our culture’, ‘our customs’.

But not always. And Robert Mugabe, that man conservative by temperament and authoritarian by upbringing, is not at all the traditional African male. He is sympathetic to women, and–they say–much influenced by his mother, a remarkable woman whose life was as hard as African women’s lives nearly always are.

LEADERS

Always and everywhere citizens sit around wondering. Why does he–she–they–do this or that? and in the same tone of frustrated incredulity of ‘But why does Mugabe…?’

There surely must be a secret ingredient, information withheld, a palmed card, the joker in the pack?–for the citizens simply cannot believe what is going on.

Let us take a recent event in Britain. (But it happened in the United States too.) It was decided to close mental hospitals and throw out all the inhabitants, who would thereafter be ‘cared for in the community’. Anyone who knew about the services which would be caring for these poor people, could foresee what would happen. The unfortunates would be living on their wits, or be exploited by landlords, or drink or drug themselves to death. But if ordinary sensible people could see this, the experts could not. It was obvious that quite soon, people appalled by the sordid fate of the expelled ones, would cry ‘Eureka! I’ve got it! What we need are a-s-y-l-u-m-s, what we need are r-e-f-u-g-e-s where they can be looked after. Why is it people didn’t think of that before?’

Over and over again this kind of thing happens, always to the bafflement of people who are not experts or officials.

There is an ingredient X. It is that as soon as people get into power, even on an ordinary level, they only meet people like themselves and who think the same–they succumb to a kind of gentle group hypnosis. Nothing is more rewarding than to spend an hour or so in the company of, let’s say, Labour officials, and then an hour with the same level of Conservatives. They live inside different mental landscapes, which they continually reshape to make them fit with their beliefs. So powerful is this mechanism that politicians seem able to persuade themselves of anything. At the time of the miners’ strike–Arthur Scargill’s–members of the hard left all over the country were sure Britain was on the verge of red revolution, and