SA needs to learn from Zimbabwe … by not being like it

Today, it will be 40 years since Bob Marley sang his songs of struggle before tens of thousands of people at Harare’s Rufaro Stadium, as Robert Mugabe and Prince Charles looked on.

Marley and Mugabe are no longer with us and the people of Zimbabwe will probably find little to celebrate on their national day.

With a collapsed economy and rampant poverty which has forced millions into involuntary exile, as well as a brutal de facto one-party dictatorship still enriching the elite, Zimbabwe looks like the quintessential African freedom failure.

What happened to the promise of 1980? It was fulfilled in the beginning by Mugabe, who boosted health and education to levels not seen under white rule. But under pressure from South African apartheid-era destabilisation and dissent within his own country, Mugabe unleashed terror on his own people and further entrenched his own dictatorship, stealing elections to stay in power.

Pressured by international financial institutions to “adjust” his economy – which began runaway inflation and accelerated poverty – Mugabe turned to seizing white-owned land, using the issue as a scapegoat for his own failures.

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