Mugabe and the Third Reich

What is currently happening in Zimbabwe is more than just slightly reminiscent of what happened in the Third Reich during the first few months of 1945 until the final unconditional surrender on the 9th May of that year.

Here was Adolf Hitler, a megalomaniac who had long lost all sense of propriety and, although the major cities had been bombed out and the Russian were baying at the gates of Berlin and, in fact, already in Berlin, Hitler kept on believing in a final victory; in that one battle that would swing the whole war back into the favour of the Nazis and would set them on the path to world domination.

The Final Solution for the Jewish people in Germany was but one of the hare-brained projects, resulting in some 6 million dead

It ended abruptly with the suicide of Hitler and his first and only wife, Eva Braun, in the "Führer" bunker. The others in Hitler's inner circle fled; the proverbial rats leaving the sinking ship. Some of them were caught and put on trial; others simply disappeared.

The dream was over. The bubble had burst. The Third Reich, the Thousand Year Reich, was no more.

All that was left to suffer the consequences of that senseless war were the millions of German citizens who, whether right or wrong, had to struggle through the occupation by the Western Forces.

Closer to home we had Shaka Zulu who ensured that Mzilikazi took members of his tribe on the flight north to present-day Zimbabwe, fearing wholesale slaughter by the Zulu king.

Later, during the 20th century and in other parts of Africa, there were Mobuto Sese-Seko and Idi Amin – the killers are just too many to mention.

They all killed indiscriminately just to preserve the power over their people. These dictators , once they has savoured complete and absolute power, were hooked and everything else was secondary. Their lieutenants, of course, handsomely benefited from the reigns of terror and were equally reluctant to see their provider of untold luxury disappear into the myths of time and history.

Somehow the similarities to Zimbabwe are telling. Here to we have a single-minded, bull-headed man who can brook no wrong and sees himself still as the ultimate saviour of his people. Here, too, ironically we had a “Hitler”

Mugabe's form of the Final Solution was called Gukurahundi and massacred at least 20000 people in the 1980s and ridded him of serious contenders; then later, after the urban dwellers had shown Mugabe that they were more disposed to Tsvangirai and the MDC than him, followed Operation Murambabatsvina in which hundreds of thousands were uprooted and most stay uprooted until this day.

In the year two thousand Mugabe made another horrible mistake: He took over the most productive farms – the backbone of the Zimbabwean economy – and stocked these farms with sympathisers, sycophants, hangers-on and, if the truth be told, anybody who knew nothing about farming and could not care either. They wanted posh farms. They did not to be hard-working farmers.

Many of those farms today still lie fallow, agricultural production is down by more than 60% since then and the houses look like those of the bombed-out Germany – with one difference. Here they were not bombed; they were plainly vandalised by people plainly vindictive

After the shock of the March 29 March 2008 elections in which Mugabe and his Zanu-PF for the first time lost its majority in parliament, and, by some sort of sorcery managed to inveigle himself into a run-off for president, the violence is unprecedented. By hook or by crook Mugabe wants to stay in power. Or does he? There are plenty of rumours afoot the armed forces have him by the short and curlies and that, in fact, they are the ones who want to prolong the agony of the Zimbabweans – at least until they can their millions out.

The final collapse of the once blooming Zimbabwe, the breadbasket of th region, does not seem to be too far off, with inflation already reaching towards the 2 million % mark and the Zim Dollar trading at anything between 1 million and 1, 5 million to the US$.

The analogies between Nazi Germany and Mugabe's Zimbabwe are unmistakeable.

Maybe we should take solace in the fact that, eventually, Germany rose from the ashes like the proverbial phoenix and today proudly stands amongst the giants of the world.

Will we see the same in Zimbabwe? We all would love to, but only time will tell and at what cost to the people of that once peaceful country?

May the analogy continue and may the time pass quickly!