Sitting in his office beneath a portrait of himself, Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe cut a lonely, pitiful figure in his first in-depth interview in nearly 30 years, moved to tears at the memory of his lamented friendship with Britain's Queen Elizabeth. Moments later, however, his eyes sparked with anger, betraying his vengeful nature.
The 84-year-old Mugabe was talking to author Heidi Holland and her resulting "psycho-biography" depicts a deluded leader who still has the power to bring everything right for his country -- on condition that he gets a phone call from Downing Street.
"His issue is with Britain," said Holland, whose book, Dinner With Mugabe, has just been published by Penguin South Africa. "Even today, he sees the white farmers as British. Given the history and the behavior of Britain, there is logic -- a twisted logic -- to his thinking. It's all very well for Britain to say he is beneath contempt. But it is they who have to talk to him if the crisis is to end."
PHOTO: EPA
Holland, a white Zimbabwean living in South Africa, spent 18 months lobbying for the interview, which she finally obtained in December thanks to a Roman Catholic priest close to Mugabe.
"I had been waiting in Harare for five weeks and had been vetted and grilled. In the end I received a call telling me I should be at State House in half an hour. I arrived at 10am and three hours later His Excellency -- `HE' as everyone calls him -- received me," she said.
Holland's only previous meeting with Mugabe was in 1975 when she cooked chicken for him at a clandestine dinner in Salisbury (now Harare). When he left her house, it was to go to Mozambique to lead guerrillas fighting Rhodesian white rule. He became prime minister in 1980.
"I think meeting me [again] was a searing experience for him. He is a loner with no friends who has constructed a bubble around himself because he does not want to confront his failure," she said.
For the entire two-and-a-half hour interview, Mugabe sat behind his desk on a swivel chair.
"There are comfy chairs in the office, but he preferred the safety of his desk," she said.
To write her book, which includes interviews with British and Zimbabwean friends and foes of the president, Holland sought the help of three psychologists.
"I needed help to understand how events in Mugabe's life, including his childhood, had impacted on his internal narrative," she said.
By the age of 10 his father had left the family home and his older brother had died. It was a joyless childhood, cut short.
"Mugabe has a thin skin and a shaky self-image. He has unrealistic expectations of people. When he is rejected or humiliated, he turns to revenge. His relationship with the British government has the intensity of a family feud," she said.
Holland saw evidence of Mugabe's ire whenever her questioning hit on controversial subjects such as the Gukurahundi (the killing of up to 30,000 Ndebeles in the 1980s).
"Gukurahundi, what was it? You had a party with a guerrilla force that wanted to reverse democracy. And action was taken. And yes, there might have been excesses, on both sides. There is no regret about the fact that we had to defend the country. But excess, where it happened, yes. Any death that should not have happened is a cause for regret," Mugabe said.
Some interviewees told Holland that the land invasions that began in 2000 and have deprived hundreds of whites of their farms may have been initially supported by Mugabe but got out of hand.
"He denies this, of course," Holland said. "But what is most interesting is that ... he really thought the British government would do something."
But Britain, under former prime minister Tony Blair, proved the equivalent of a disappointing parent, quick to scold and unwilling to listen. When the Labour government made it clear it felt no obligation to subsidize further programs of land acquisition because previous compensation had been misused, Mugabe went ballistic.
"He was nearly crying when he told me that Blair `even poisoned Prince Charles and the Queen against me,'" Holland said.
"I think he granted me the interview because he feels he is getting old and it's time to put certain things on the record. But he expects to win the election and probably will," she said.
Asked how he would like to be remembered, Mugabe told Holland: "Just as the son of a peasant family who, alongside others, felt he had a responsibility to fight for his country and was grateful for the honor that the people gave him in leading them to victory over British imperialism."
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS