The Power Of Lies, And The Lies Of Power

In the years before Mugabe took power, perceptions of him were more cardboard cut-out than reality – ranging from Marxist fanatic at one end of the spectrum to selfless liberation icon at the other.

So it is of little wonder that these views were radically altered when occasional glimpses were replaced by regular acquaintance after he became prime minister of the new Zimbabwe in 1980. His Rhodesian political nemesis, Ian Smith, was typical, writing of their first meeting that Mugabe was “the antithesis of the communist gangster I had expected”.

Yet, in many cases, the new perceptions of Mugabe were as flawed as the old. Stale illusions were replaced by fresh ones. In part, this was a psychological phenomenon: Outsized fears – when shown to be false – tended to be replaced by rose-tinted enthusiasm.

It is for this reason that key members of the Rhodesian security apparatus, who had expected the imposition of a communist dictatorship, became as dedicated to Mugabe’s cause as they had previously been to killing him. Likewise, the British, who had colluded with the Rhodesians to keep Mugabe from power, now became strong supporters and tenaciously clung to the notion that he was a “moderate”.

But there was more to these misconceptions than emotional factors. Mugabe consciously set out to mislead others in order to manoeuvre them – and he was highly proficient at it. Behind every statement or action there was, almost invariably, a hidden agenda.

Ironically, it is other deceivers – among them, agents of apartheid South Africa in his inner circle – who lay some of this bare through their records of private encounters with Mugabe.

In November 1980, for example, reports appeared in the press that Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) government intended to take white farmland without compensation because Britain had allegedly failed to fulfil promises to provide finance for the purchase of land.

A South African source reported to Pretoria that Mugabe had “discussed this matter (with him) before he made it public” and had “intentionally made these statements to try and prod the Brits into making funds available”. When the source “pointed out to Mugabe the danger of the effect that it would have on … the (confidence of) white farmers … Mugabe’s reaction … was that he would repudiate it after he had said it. This is exactly what happened.”

Indeed, on this issue, Mugabe went as far as delivering flatly contradictory messages to different audiences on the same day. On one occasion, he told white farmers that they should “stay on in Zimbabwe and reassured them that the government recognised their role as the backbone of the Zimbabwean economy”, only to tell a black audience shortly afterwards that the government would “take over” white-owned farms and “redistribute them to peasant farmers”.

Attempting to make sense of such contradictions, the British concluded that Mugabe was politicking in order to manage expectations among his black constituency.

A year later, a British diplomat wrote to London of another instance when Mugabe had claimed “we were denying his government funds to purchase land for resettlement and said that we must buy land from ‘our kith and kin’”. If the British failed to provide funds, “the government would not hesitate to take over this land and give it to the peasants”.

The author lamented that it was “disheartening that Mugabe should have spoken in this way when he knows full well that there is no lack of money for land purchase and that delays in the scheme are largely caused by the inefficiency of the Zimbabwe bureaucracy and physical restraints”.

Still, the British were persuaded that the government’s “real policies” were different to “such talk” and that they would have to live with the prime minister’s posturing from time to time. It does not seem to have occurred to them that they were being played by Mugabe.

It was not just the “imperialist”, white West that was the target and victim of Mugabe’s dissembling. He took an equally cynical approach to Zanu (PF)’s ostensible ideological fellow travellers and closest wartime allies.

Remarking on a visit he made to China and North Korea at the end of 1980, he told a colleague – also a South African spy – that it had been necessary to go because of the assistance these countries had provided during the war, but added that the trip was a “lot of bull”. The Chinese and Koreans wanted to assist Zimbabwe only “by supplying a few tractors and many technicians”. He was “personally … not at all impressed with the idea of the technicians” because they were little more than a fifth column – a posse of “Marxists who will start a process of undermining” and who would “only contribute to more friction within the party”.

Rather than be exploited by his allies, Mugabe turned the tables and used them for his own ends. On the same trip, blowing hard on the horn of Kim Il-sung and the language of socialist brotherhood so beloved by the ‘Great Leader’, he negotiated a deal for the Koreans to train and equip a brigade of the Zimbabwe National Army.

This Fifth Brigade was to operate separately from the units being trained by the British and was to become what amounted to a private army of ruling party. Two years later, it was used to smash the grassroots structures of Zanu’s nationalist rival, Zapu, and to massacre its supporters.

Not that Mugabe was any more grateful to the Koreans for their assistance in “consolidating” Zimbabwe’s independence (as the bilateral verbiage described it) than he had been for their help during the liberation struggle.

Contrary to the appearance of intimacy with the Koreans that was created by the notoriety of the Fifth Brigade, Mugabe remained as distrustful of them as he had been before.

Using West German technology and white Cold War warriors from the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) – a Rhodesian institution previously much maligned by the nationalists but now appropriated by Zanu (PF) – Mugabe tracked every move of the Koreans.

CIO counterintelligence, undoubtedly with Mugabe’s approval, also placed other professed friends under surveillance. One of those was South Africa’s ANC. Thabo Mbeki has since claimed that Mugabe agreed to allow the ANC to use Zimbabwe as a base from which to conduct covert military operations in apartheid South Africa – a claim that seems to have more to do with Mbeki’s latter-day dalliance with Mugabe than the historical reality of the antagonistic relationship between Zanu and the ANC. But if Mugabe did give the ANC such assurances, he lied.

Counterintelligence watched the ANC – and Mbeki himself – as intensively as those Mugabe loathed the most, all with a view to preventing ANC operations of the kind that Mbeki says were authorised.

In what is another conspicuous irony, the voluminous nature of CIO intelligence on the ANC, much of which was photocopied by apartheid agents and sent south, provided Pretoria with a detailed manual on how to attack ANC targets in Zimbabwe. While Mugabe was concerned about the threat posed by South African agents to his own security, it is not clear that he was particularly bothered by collateral damage to the ANC. Given his antipathy towards Zapu and the Russians, two ANC allies that attracted the deepest of his not inconsiderable hatreds, it is reasonable to suspect that he was not.

Certainly, Mugabe’s Machiavellian bent extended well beyond superficial liberation partners such as the ANC to his own party colleagues and even his closest confidants.

Mugabe used the CIO to watch the activities of troublesome party leaders such as Eddison Zvobgo, and there were other times when Zanu (PF) ministers agreed to report on their counterparts directly. Joice Mujuru – along with her husband, Solomon, then army chief – served as Mugabe’s moles in 1980 when two of Mugabe’s most disruptive internal rivals, Edgar Tekere and Enos Nkala, met to discuss the formation of a rebel faction dubbed ‘Super Zanu’. Thirty years later, the wheel had seemingly turned, with Joice tracing Solomon’s mysterious death in a 2011 house fire to his participation in a committee that had been established to discuss a successor to Mugabe.

Throughout the 1980s, there was no one more deeply immersed in Mugabe’s machinations than the minister of state security, Emmerson Mnangagwa. He was, more often than not, the day-to-day link between the schemes in the prime minister’s head and their implementation. It was Mnangagwa who oversaw the CIO’s surveillance operations – and much more besides. And it was because of this dangerous proximity that he knew, better than anyone else, that Mugabe had no friends, only interests – most of which had a clandestine element. As early as 1981, there were reports from South African sources that Mugabe was determined to “keep an eye on Mnangagwa”, with some accounts suggesting he wanted to “get rid of” his intelligence sidekick. While the more dramatic stories were probably little more than makuhwa, or rumour, Mnangagwa himself was clearly watching his back.

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