He was a Pan-Africanist, a black orientalist and proud negro.
He started out as a revolutionary and an anti-imperialist in the mould of Thomas Sankara of Burkinafaso, Patrice Lumumba of DRC, Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Muammar Ghadaffi of Libya....Including the Independence revolutionaries like Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, Kwame Nkuruma of Ghana, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Leopard Senghor of Senegal and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya.
However his despotic tendencies and unbridled quest to hung unto power inherent in most African leaders nearly tarnished his revolutionary credentials.
Mugabe believed that Zimbabwe's economic woes, was as a result of sabotage by Western imperialists because of his anti-imperialist stance.
By dying at 95, I also observed that longevity is African.
Save for those whose lives were cut short by Western conspiracies, all lived a long life.
Nelson Mandela died at 95, Nnamdi Azikiwe died at 96, Leopold Senghor died at 95, Robert Mugabe died at 95, Kenneth Kaunda is still alive at 95.
Known for his controversy, I always reel with laughter whenever I remember some of Mugabe's last moments in power:
After the 2016 Olympic game in Brazil, when none of Zimbabwe's 31 athletes won any medal, Robert Mugabe fumed and called for their arrests, saying:
“We have wasted the country’s money on these rats we call athletes....
”If we needed people to just go to Brazil to sing our national anthem and hoist our flag, we would have sent some of the beautiful girls and handsome guys from University of Zimbabwe to represent us.”
He insisted the expenses will be regarded as "soft loan" which the athletes used to visit Brazil as tourists, and must be paid back to the government over the a period of time.
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