## Metadata - Author: [[Martin Meredith]] - Full Title: Mugabe - Category: #books ## Highlights - Senior officials from the Rhodesian era whom Mugabe decided to retain were similarly impressed. Among them was Ken Flower, the head of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), a secret police organisation, who had previously spent considerable effort trying to organise Mugabe’s assassination. When Flower first called at his office, Mugabe suggested that they should meet regularly for a tête-à-tête. When they next met a few days later, Flower was anxious to explain about the various attempts the Rhodesians had made to kill Mugabe, to ensure that Mugabe was fully informed about his background. But Mugabe simply laughed. “Yes, but they all failed, otherwise we would not be here together,” he remarked. “And do not expect me to applaud your failures.” Mugabe paused for a moment, then said, “As far as I have realised the position, we were trying to kill each other; that’s what the war was about. What I’m concerned with now is that my public statements should be believed when I say I have drawn a line through the past. From now on we must trust each other if we are to work together for the benefit of the majority. I want people to believe in my policy of reconciliation and to respond accordingly.” ([Location 677](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003P9XDGG&location=677)) - The “honeymoon,” he said, was over. “What baffles my government is that reactionary and counter-revolutionary elements, because of their treason and crimes against humanity in Zimbabwe we could have put before a firing squad, but which we decided to forgive, have hardly repented.” Instead of working for national reconciliation, “they have in practice rejected it and are acting in collusion with South Africa to harm our racial relations, to destroy our unity, to sabotage our economy, and to overthrow the popularly elected government I lead.” ([Location 830](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003P9XDGG&location=830)) - Mugabe broadened his attack on whites to include not just spies and saboteurs but the white community as a whole, focusing his anger on the wealth they continued to enjoy. After eighteen months of independence, he said, white racial attitudes had not changed; they continued to scold, beat, and abuse their workers. “It is the blood and sweat of the workers that has made these people millionaires. They have sucked the blood of their workers like vampires so that they can board expensive aeroplanes and go on long holidays.” It was no longer acceptable that “the very bourgeoisie which only yesterday enjoyed political power and used it to oppress the Zimbabwean people . . . continues to have a monopoly on Zimbabwe’s economic power.” That, he said, must be broken. ([Location 837](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003P9XDGG&location=837)) - “The law of evidence and the criminal procedure we have inherited is a stupid ass. It’s one of those principles born out of the stupidity of some of the procedures of colonial times.” ([Location 871](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003P9XDGG&location=871)) - In the election for the white seats in parliament in 1985, the last before their seven-year term under the Lancaster House agreement expired, Smith was vindicated. His party, the Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe, gained fifteen of twenty seats. Seeing their victory as a betrayal, Mugabe reacted with fury, denouncing Smith and the “racists” who had voted for him and threatening reprisals. ([Location 894](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003P9XDGG&location=894)) - The impact of Gukurahundi on Matabeleland was indelible. “This wound is huge and deep,” a village headmen said in Lupane in 1996. “The liberation war was painful, but it had a purpose, it was planned, face to face. The war that followed was much worse. It was fearful, unforgettable and unacknowledged.” ([Location 1124](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003P9XDGG&location=1124)) - he was later to boast that he had “a degree in violence.” ([Location 1166](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003P9XDGG&location=1166)) - Thus, from the start of his administration, even when dealing with an issue as sacred as the liberation struggle, Mugabe developed a caste system, making a clear distinction between the “chefs” who ran the government—a name given to Zanu leaders who had spent the war in exile in Mozambique—and the “povos” or masses they ruled. Despite endless pronouncements about his commitment to transforming Zimbabwe into a socialist society, he never made any moves in that direction, and the gap between the chefs and the povos widened with each passing year. ([Location 1184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003P9XDGG&location=1184)) - “Mugabe has always stopped anything that enabled rural people and communities to gain an effective degree of autonomy, particularly financial, as that might reduce his ability to play patron and to use the party and the state to manipulate people and issues.” ([Location 1287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003P9XDGG&location=1287)) - The same threats of violence were used by Zanu-PF in its campaign advertisements. One television advertisement, watched by many viewers with astonishment and disbelief, featured the screech of tyres and the crushing of glass and metal in a car accident, followed by a voice warning coldly: “This is one way to die. Another is to vote ZUM. Don’t commit suicide, vote Zanu-PF and live.” Another advertisement showed a coffin being lowered into a grave followed by the warning: “AIDS kills. So does ZUM. Vote Zanu-PF.” ([Location 1384](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003P9XDGG&location=1384))