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On the passing of Robert Mugabe.
Julie and I landed in Harare on 13 January 1983. It was to be our home for the almost the next decade. My daughters Roxanne and Rosa were born there in Parirenyatwa public hospital.
#RIPMugabe
Julie and I landed in Harare on 13 January 1983. It was to be our home for the almost the next decade. My daughters Roxanne and Rosa were born there in Parirenyatwa public hospital.
#RIPMugabe
It was eerie because just days before the Apartheid regime began destabilising Zimbabwe by blowing up the fuel pipeline between the Mozambican port city of Beira and Harare. The plane landed in a city in which nothing moved, no busses, no cars, no noise.
Robert Mugabe and ZANU came to power in 1980.
The new government dramatically reduced military spending and massively increased health and education spending, building thousands of schools and clinics across the country, and dramatically reduced the housing backlog.
The new government dramatically reduced military spending and massively increased health and education spending, building thousands of schools and clinics across the country, and dramatically reduced the housing backlog.
Intentionally steering clear of the #RIPMugabe conversation out of respect for the dead, but one thing I will say is that the monster RGM became didn't exist without a context. Some people created that monster. Always important to see things in their wider perspective.
Some people crossed the Atlantic with state backing and stole other people's land, then spent the next century fighting to keep the stolen land. The Chimurenga wars were some of the most brutal. We hear a lot about De Klerk's Apartheid, but not enough about Ian Smith's Rhodesia.
The Apartheid regime in South Africa was tame compared to the Rhodies. Those guys were literally the bad guys from Pocahontas. When they arrested RGM (then a relatively harmless guy) and made him a political prisoner, they didn't even let him attend his 3 year-old son's funeral.
