Jerome-Mario Utomi

As background to this piece, Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born on February 21, 1924, in Kutama, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). In 1963, he founded ZANU, a resistance movement against British colonial rule.

Mugabe became prime minister of the new Republic of Zimbabwe after British rule ended in 1980, and he assumed the role of president seven years later. Mugabe retained a strong grip on power, through controversial elections, until he was forced to resign in November 2017, at age 93 and he died recently at a ripe age of 95years.

Except for peripheral reason(s), it will be hard not to describe someone with the above achievements as a hero. The reasons for this assertion are barefaced.

Aside from leading a frontline struggle for his country’s independence, Mugabe was a man that loved, sought and got enough dose of education. Fundamentally also, as it is reputed of heros, his rise to power, his forced resignation and eventual death had not only elicited controversy but left great lessons for both present and future leaders.

As an illustration, some have described Mugabe as a blessing to Zimbabwe for – kicking out about 4,000 white farmers and giving their land to the black Zimbabweans; and as a lover of education, he laid a solid educational foundation in the country which currently qualifies Zimbabuwe among nations with the highest literacy rate in Africa.

On the other hands, many commentators have described the above accolades to Mugabe as not factually backed and went ahead to state that he (Mugabe) enjoyed more burden than goodwill in the estimation of the right-thinking Zimbabweans.

In the same style, others argued that since Mugabe in his quest to hold on to power, massacred 20,000 of his people and not animals, he remains a murderer and an evil man with 20, 000 blood stains in his hands, adding that he died in Singapore because he could neither build nor sustain a good hospital in Zimbabwe. The rest are of the opinion that the man who destroyed the nation’s economy and watched with disinterest while his wife looted millions of dollars, such a man that ruled with an iron fist, killing his opposition cannot be regarded as a hero.

Whatever the true situation may be, one useful lesson seems to stands out.

In the leadership world, just like it is in the real world of business, performance does not count in absolute terms. Rather, it is the performance that is people-purposed and rendered with a human face that counts

Frankly, as humans, we are advised not to speak ill about the dead. But I must say a few things after looking way back in September 2017, before his forced resignation and reading a piece authored by Mbizo Chirasa, poet and a very prominent voice in Zimbabwe, of which the content will form the plot of this discourse.

I concluded that Robert Mugabe was not only part of the nation’s problem but that his days as president of Zimbabwe were numbered. However, I neither envisaged it coming that soon nor contemplated it will occur through an undemocratic means.

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Mbizo Chirasa in that piece noted that ‘the revolutionary CADRES believe that change in Zimbabwe must begin by changing the leadership matrix in the ruling party, including laying off their political lotteries,’ Robert Mugabe – whom he roundly blamed for the infuriating scorn, the liberation veterans received from the verbal cyclone Grace Mugabe, whose verbal acid burns the fontanels of the eldest liberation strongmen, most of whom are victimised daily in the corridors of power, while concluding that Grace Mugabe has become Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe is now, Grace Mugabe. She has tasted more sweetness than bitterness in the power trenches since her meteoric rise to the politburo – the highest decision-making body in the ZANU-PF power structures.

From the above country, it is deducible that what in the first instance made his (Mugabe’s) forced resignation seamless was that at a point in his administration, he became unmindful of the fact that he was being watched closely – that people were noting every move he made, learning a great deal about him and what he really believed in as opposed to what he said. And none seemed to remind him that the people’s support and their unwavering fate built on trust are the greatest assets a leader enjoys from his followers.

From Mbizo Chirasa’s position, it will also not be hasty to conclude that the stage for President Mugabe’s downfall was set when he, against all known logic, totally consecrated himself, his government, and the soul of Zimbabwe to the ‘immaculate’’ hands of Grace Mugabe, his wife.

But in doing that, he failed as a student of history to harness the social responsibility postulations which strictly advises that every freedom must go with a responsibility. This political miscalculation of Mugabe as a person should act as a warning signal to current crops of leaders planning to, or already acting in such manner.

In my views, this occurred because of the fate President Mugabe and his wife Grace were deceived by a barefaced illusion that made them feel more nationalistic than patriotic – viewed Zimbabwe as their personal property thereby affirming indispensability and superiority over other Zimbabweans. That to my mind was the missing link that landed Mugabe in this sorry state -a situation that should sound as a note of warning to our present crop of leaders.

Another factor that the ‘lion’ of Zimbabwe failed to remember as a president in which all should draw a lesson from is that knowing when, and when not to, is the victory. Yes, I appreciate his love for education cum knowledge. But in all fairness, I must say that the volume of knowledge acquired wasn’t best applied. If not, he ought to have departed the political stage when the ovation was loudest without waiting for the military to boot him out.

In the same vein, I am well aware that Baba Mugabe as a scholar must have come across the aphorism which says that ‘for one to know about the road ahead, he must ask those coming back.’ But on this ideology, Mugabe, again, failed as he deliberately decided not to ask or learn from the likes of Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, or from Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire and other African presidents via their biographies.

Instead, he banked only on his certificates and on the ‘grace’ of Grace Mugabe. He brazenly allowed power to move from the corridor to the bedroom.

Still on the negative side, when the economy of Zimbabwe under his watch is peeped into, one will discover without labour that Robert was more of a burden than an asset.

To buttress this point, it is on record that the Mugabe-led administration made virtually all Zimbabweans millionaires but economically powerless occasioned by an uncontrollable galloping inflation. Yet, he did not border to carry out self-introspection that would help to unravel the great disservice he was doing to both the economy and the people.

Truly, he obviously started on a good note but ended badly.

However, while Mugabe is gone and we pray God to rest his soul, his life, leadership style and death have presented a very good learning platform for the current leaders in Africa. Yes, African leaders must learn from his mistakes.