THE MIND OF A DICTATOR

Zimbabwe’s failures today do indeed have roots in the past: in the authoritarian system Mugabe inherited from his white predecessor as dictator, Ian Smith; in the promises and lies whispered to all sides by Margaret Thatcher and Henry Kissinger before independence; in the vicious internecine battles among pan-Africanists, Maoists and Leninists within the liberation movement. Mugabe himself was never a charismatic guerrilla, as people across Africa believed him to be: in episode after episode, he comes across as little more than a highly educated, well-spoken academic, the eternal consensus candidate. Indeed, he seemed totally unambitious, opposing even the coup within his party that installed him as its leader.

That does not mean that he did not fall. Holland spoke to many, from the dictator’s favourite Indian tailor Bhula Bhagat to some of the most influential people in Zimbabwe’s recent history and Mugabe himself. What emerges is the story of someone who found himself a leader, suffered from never being effortlessly charismatic or aristocratic (unlike Nelson Mandela, the charming Xhosa prince, for whom Mugabe has a soul-destroying envy) and believed that he was betrayed or repulsed again and again. One story illustrates this: the day that Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and its new president was sworn in, he asked Smith to meet him. When Smith walked in, Mugabe asked the man who had imprisoned him for 11 years and did not let him out of jail when his son was dying, to sit beside him. According to Smith, Mugabe then took Smith’s hand in his. Smith pulled it away violently, and his actions over the next 10 years were to follow up on that: far from attempting to make a place for his constituency — the white farmers — in the new dispensation, Smith destabilised their relations with ZANU to the point that Mugabe felt that asking them for further support was pointless.

The same with Britain. Mugabe had excellent personal relations with several members of the old ruling elite, including the last governor-general of Rhodesia, Lord Soames; they, in turn, speak fairly warmly of him. The problem arose when John Major handed over power to Tony Blair. Mugabe himself seems unable to refer to Blair’s party as Labour, calling it always “new Labour”. Under previous prime ministers, assurances had been made to Zimbabwe that, if the rights of the white minority were respected, Britain would shoulder some of the burden of land reform by helping pay the large farmers some compensation when their land was divided up. Blair changed that policy, already watered down by Thatcher. For Mugabe — and much of sub-Saharan Africa — this was a sign that the old imperial power was ducking out of its responsibilities. It embittered Mugabe further, and explains first, the vicious anti-British rhetoric that so alienated him from the rest of the world; then, his decision to paint his own white farmers, whom Britain was simultaneously abandoning and championing, as representing British interests; and finally, his refusal to accept that the opposition, Movement for Democratic Change, funded in part by white farmers, was in any way legitimate.

Mugabe’s transformation, once Holland’s stories have been told, is nowhere near as much a mystery as it was before. This is a compelling achievement. Unfortunately, much of the insight is battered into the reader by Holland’s ham-handed pop psychology. When we read about Mugabe’s strange dependence on the mercurial, untrustworthy and brilliant diplomat Lord Carrington, we are capable of making a connection between that and his childhood without a father. Interpolated paragraphs stressing that connection and other such do not strengthen the book. (There are far too many paragraphs beginning “It seems to me…”.) Holland’s reportage is excellent, her analysis less so; but overall, the book will serve better as an extraordinarily useful resource for anyone trying to understand Zimbabwe, Mugabe, or dictators in general.