The Guardian
By Blessing-Miles Tendi
Thursday August 28 2008
Mugabe has always switched his views on race to make political capital, as his enthusiastic welcome of Kirsty Coventry shows
“The only white man you can trust is a dead white man.”
“Our party must continue to strike fear in the heart of the white man, our real enemy.”
Those are Robert Mugabe’s words. They are forever etched in modern African history as indicative of the anti-white politics that took hold in Zimbabwe from 2000 onwards, when the Mugabe government proclaimed that Zimbabwe was for black Zimbabweans and Africa for black Africans. Race was politicised to an unprecedented level and aggressive threats to the white community were carried out, namely the violent seizure of white-owned commercial farms. White Zimbabweans were blamed for all of Zimbabwe’s problems. They were labelled racists and accused of working hand in hand with white Britain in funding and directing opposition politics in Zimbabwe.
Only a government with selective amnesia would ever embrace anything “white” after years of inexorable anti-white politics. The Mugabe government is one such government. Kirsty Coventry, a white Zimbabwean swimmer, won four medals – one gold and three silver – at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She was the only Zimbabwean athlete to win a medal at the games. Coventry was greeted with a heroine’s homecoming in Zimbabwe yesterday. Mugabe congratulated her “most heartily on that heroic performance”, on the eve of her return. Gone was Mugabe’s anti-white speechifying. A victory parade through the streets of Zimbabwe’s capital city Harare was staged in her honour and she attended a banquet hosted by Mugabe at his official state house residence.
It is tempting to conclude that given Zimbabwe’s prevailing political, social and economic morass, the Mugabe government is capitalising on Coventry’s Olympic success to deflect national attention away from the country’s problems. Certainly, Coventry’s achievement has provided weary and oppressed Zimbabweans with some national fanfare in a land where all else is a litany of monotonous struggle and human suffering. However, the Mugabe government’s response to Coventry’s medal-winning performances is part of its wider contradictory logic of race relations.
Whites were embraced as brothers and sisters at independence in 1980 because it was politically expedient. In 2000 they were disowned as the political necessities of defeating the burgeoning opposition MDC took centre stage. Mugabe rants and raves against white people and Britain yet he professes his undying affection and respect for the British royal family. Indeed there is a lot about Mugabe that is British, from his accent to his dress code to his love for cricket. English remains Zimbabwe’s national language, 28 years after colonialism.
The contradictions are starker with regard to the majority black population, which the Mugabe government has attempted to indoctrinate with its racist politics. Anti-white politics has not aroused black Zimbabweans against white people. Even during the explosive land seizures phase, to a greater extent attacks on white Zimbabweans remained linked to state-sponsored farm invasions and official pronouncements. Spontaneous nationwide populist looting, beatings and lynching of white people never occurred. Four white MDC members were elected to parliament at the height of the farm seizures.
One of them, a farmer called Roy Bennet, had his commercial farm invaded by war-veterans in 2000 but scored a resounding electoral victory none the less.
Another elected white parliamentarian, David Coltart, was a Rhodesian police officer when he was 18 years old. In spite of the Mugabe government’s use of Coltart’s history against him, Coltart remains a popular politician.
The Mugabe government’s “hatred” of whites has not filtered down to the average black Zimbabwean. Most black Zimbabweans are aware that the root cause of Zimbabwe’s problems is, ultimately, the Mugabe government. Blaming white Zimbabweans and white Britain will never wash this charge away. Black Zimbabweans see through it – just as they see the irony in the Mugabe government’s taking of Coventry to its bosom.