Here's my thoughts on Zim and Mugabe's legacy. I am not a Mugabe-stan or am going to support the stuff he did in the latter part of his rule.
The fight against the Matabele in the early 1980s was the first fall from grace though the country did heal and incorporate them into ZANU-PF. For all its faults, ethnic tensions are less of a fault line in Zim than even South Africa. If Mugabe had sat his ass down around 1995 he would be remembered as one of the better African leaders. The best thing he accomplished was in education. Mugabe with his education ministers Dr. Dzingai Mutumbuka and Fay Chung (African born 3rd generation Chinese but 100% pro-Black) allocated about 20% of the budget to education. From 1980 to 2000 the literacy rate went from 30% to 92%, one of the highest in Africa and even higher than North African countries like Tunisia. The relative skills and education of Zimbabwean immigrants in SA (who had been under a non-segreated education system for 15 years longer) is partially why they are targeted by xenophobes.
Zimbabwe was basically stable and Mugabe probably was trying to build the country but also had to be dealing with Front Line status against apartheid South Africa. Shortly after South Africa went free, he started going off the rails. There were other things too like the death of his first wife Sally, the Blair government dikking around with British obligations to land reform stated in the Lancaster House accords, stopping the British backed attempted coup in Eq. Guinea by mercenaries, and Western hypocrisy at sanctioning Zimbabwe for intervening on behalf of the DRC in the civil war (our allies Uganda and Rwanda received no such discipline fighting on the other side in the DRC but that is another story). But at the end of the day, you should not become a dictator and assault the rights of your own people (Black or White) due to outsiders etc. and any land reform he did gave it away to cronies who often didn't have the knowledge to use it. Again, it wasn't even done smart.
Also if he had been an authoritarian like Julius Nyerere and lived a modest personal life, it also wouldn't have been as galling as the wealth he and his family accumulated. But it is what it is. Mugabe was inadvertently helped by the nature of the MDC and how they acted. I really wanted to get Mugabe out and find an alternative but the MDC never sat well with me. It seemed their biggest vision for the country was Tsvangirai wasn't Mugabe. Their economic program--as literally stated by the Economic Chief Eddie Cross--was to implement restructuring under the IMF. Wow, that never goes badly and gives your country to foreigners. Also Wikileaks revealed even the American ambassador admitted the MDC wasn't ready to govern and the US and UK will have to 'hold their hand' if they won.
The fact that this was happening during the Bush-Blair regime change/axis of evil era and Blair even hinted at military action against Mugabe only helped strengthen his hand at home and abroad. If they had a an opposition that was relatively more nationalist like in most African democracies, he may have been gone earlier. If the West wasn't trying to overthrow every government that they didn't like and wanted resources from, maybe their hissing at Zim would have been more credible. This is not to to discount the violence and intimidation against the MDC and the fact the 2008 elections were rigged. He was awful before 2008 and then damn awful afterwards. I would have preferred someone like Simba Makoni to oust him but that wasn't going to happen.
I want the Zim people to move on and have a good government. But people need to stop throwing out hyperbole that Mugabe was and will be the only problem Zim faces. Foreigners (Western and Chinese) still covet Zim's resources, mineral and farmland. While some reasonable (probably cash not just going back to the same land owning structure) compensation for some ousted commercial farmers should be on the table, we need real land reform too or another Mugabe could crop up using land reform as a scapegoat. Also, there are a few dumbasses out there (mostly White but also Black) praising how 'good' things were under Rhodesia and Ian Smith. Let's not have historical amnesia. As stated earlier Africans weren't educated and in a segregated system that removed property qualifications for voting and left 8 African reps in Parliament to 50 White reps when the population was reverse that (and more). They White government had a policy that you couldn't say Great Zimbabwe was built by Blacks and most Blacks were poor and had zero rights, getting jailed and tortured for standing up. The good times in Rhodesia were mostly for Whites and token Blacks, which doesn't surprise me why Whites talk about how great it was but Blacks who fondly remember it are crazy. Also there is evidence that Rhodesia used chemical weapons against ZANU/ZAPU. They weren't the good humor boys and their vision for the future was unlimited White immigration and being a apartheid SA-lite.
So where do we go from here? SADC needs to let Mugabe go and throw support behind rebuilding the country and its institutions. Getting agriculture fixed but also agro-processing and value added products is good. Also, mechanizing agriculture and tweaking subsidies so the big commercial farms relying on African labor will be shrunk should help reverse inequality. We need to look forward though and stop arguing about what was or should have been.
Rob the country blind and think it won't catch up to you in the end.
