Mugabe’s death ‘the end of a tragic period in history’

STEVEN GRUZD

Mugabe died for real in a Singapore hospital aged 95 last Friday. He had ruled Zimbabwe for 37 years, from independence in 1980 until the “non-coup” coup of November 2017.

What was the status of Mugabe’s relations with Jews and Israel, and how have Jewish Zimbabweans reacted to his death?

Mugabe was influenced by Jewish communists when he studied at the University of Fort Hare in South Africa in the 1950s. There’s a famous picture of Mugabe wearing a yarmulke at the funeral of Michael Gelfand, his mother’s doctor.

Rabbi Moshe Silberhaft heads the newly-formed Small Jewish Communities Association of South Africa and the African Jewish Congress (AJC). He said small communities in Africa must make sure they are uninvolved politically, and remain on good terms with those in power. Mugabe had good ties with the Zimbabwean Jewish community, he believes, including a mutually beneficial relationship with Jewish businesspeople.

In the 2000s, the country began its rapid decline after Mugabe’s disastrous land-reform programme. The local Jewish community then decided that the AJC should interact with the president rather than Zimbabwean Jews, for safety reasons. “Our role is to represent the Jewish community to whichever head of state is in power. If you draw too much attention, people may lash out at you. As a small, vulnerable minority, it can’t endorse the president or condemn him either.”

Today, there are about 230 Jews left in Zimbabwe, from a peak of about 7 000 in the 1960s. “They choose to be there,” said Silberhaft. “They are not victims, abandoned and stuck there.”

Silberhaft met Mugabe four or five times. “He was always warm and welcoming. Mugabe was highly educated, and he passionately believed that what he was doing was right on the land issue. He was returning the land to its people. Sure, it came at a cost, destroying the whites, destroying the economy. I’m not here to promote him, but he was passionate, and nothing stopped him. He basically told the whole world to go to hell.”

Known for his fiery rhetoric, Mugabe made some infamous anti-Semitic statements. In 1992, he said white farmers were so “hard-hearted, you would think they were Jews”, and refused to apologise. In 2001, he said, “Jews in South Africa, working in cahoots with their colleagues here, want our textile and clothing factories to close down. They want Zimbabwe and Bulawayo to remain with warehouses to create business for South African firms.”

He also said in 2003, “I’m still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective: justice for his people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people, and their rights over their resources. If that’s Hitler, then let me be Hitler tenfold. Ten times, that is what we stand for.”

“Apart from those regrettable instances, he never made any anti-Semitic comments,” said Silberhaft.

When there were chronic shortages in 2008 amid hyperinflation, the South African Jewish community sent truckloads of supplies every six weeks to the Jews of Harare and Bulawayo. This lasted for about 18 months. Silberhaft said that Mugabe personally made sure the containers could pass through the Beitbridge border post “without customs, taxes, or waiting two or three weeks at the border. As is the Jewish way, supplies were also provided for those staff caring for Jewish people. We never had a day’s problem.

“Even though the country is on its knees, there’s no anti-Israel or anti-Jewish sentiment whatsoever,” said Silberhaft. “Mugabe never spoke out against Israel. Yes, he was a friend of the Arab world, just as every African president is. Yes, he had pictures with Arafat, as Mandela had.”

Israel and Zimbabwe established diplomatic relations in 1993. The Israeli embassy in Harare was closed by Israel for financial reasons. Now a non-resident ambassador based in Israel services Zimbabwe. Several Israeli companies operating in Zimbabwe have left as the government hasn’t paid them. This includes drip-irrigation firms, and Nikuv, an information and communications technology company that helped run elections and voter registration. “They happened to be Israelis, so they were seen as collaborators with Mugabe. But there is no hard evidence they rigged elections,” Silberhaft said, in spite of media accusations to the contrary.

Several Zimbabwean Jews we contacted were reluctant to be interviewed. Some declined to comment at all; others requested anonymity. This reflects a small, precarious community not wanting to make trouble for itself.

One leader said, “The Jewish community in Harare recognises the contribution made by the former president in bringing independence to Zimbabwe but most [but by no means all] feel that his policies brought about Zimbabwe’s downward trajectory.”

Alana Baranov, an ex-Zimbabwean now living in Durban said, “Mugabe’s passing is the end of a tragic period in Zimbabwean history. His life is a cautionary tale of the corrupting power of greed, which turned a man fighting for the oppressed into the oppressor, a freedom fighter into a hateful despot. The Gukurahundi, Operation Murambatsvina, political violence, abductions and torture – this will be his legacy. Under Mugabe’s rule, a country once filled with so much hope for a brighter future is now a symbol of the broken promises of liberation.”

Another interviewee who used to live in Bulawayo describes herself as “an ex-Zimbabwean who was forced to leave following the theft of our hard-earned wealth”. She pulled no punches, saying, “It makes no difference that he died. It’s a non-event. Most of the Matabeleland population despised him for the atrocities perpetrated during the Gukurahundi in the 1980s, when an estimated 20 000 people ‘disappeared’. The fact that he died on foreign soil in an expensive clinic is despicable, given the degree of poverty that is his only legacy. And, they are going to spend millions on his funeral when children are starving. May he rot in hell, that vile, evil, tinpot despot.”