Word: africanized
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...country, then called Rhodesia, unilaterally declared independence from Britain. After a long and bloody guerrilla war, the black majority finally took power in 1980, with Mugabe as independent Zimbabwe's first leader. He has ruthlessly held on to the position ever since. In March of last year, his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) lost a general election to Morgan Tsvangirai's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Refusing to accept the result, Mugabe turned his security forces on his own people, killing more than 100, arresting thousands and displacing tens of thousands. But this February, with...
...rule of law and care nothing for the national good, putting personal wealth and power above all other considerations." Nevertheless, he said, change was visible. The economy was reviving. Schools and hospitals had reopened. Now that the Zimbabwean currency had been replaced by the U.S. dollar and the South African rand, inflation has fallen from 231,000,000% to 3%. And while Mugabe and ZANU were the problem and "pose the greatest threat to our nation's future," Tsvangirai argued, they were also part of the solution. "We must realize and accept that these individuals are Zimbabweans, and we must...
...bears no grudge. (Since his wife died in March in a car accident in which he was also hurt, Tsvangirai finds himself repeatedly assuring his supporters that the crash was not another murder attempt.) He wants Zimbabweans and the world to rethink how they deal with Mugabe and other African Big Men. Demonizing them may be principled and cathartic, Tsvangirai believes, but it is ineffective. Criticism has done nothing to dislodge Muammar Gaddafi in Libya (in his 40th year in power) or José Eduardo dos Santos in Angola or Teodoro Obiang in Equatorial Guinea (both in their 30th), while...
...state newspapers and radio stations lead the news with profiles of ZANU heroes who have been dead for 30 years. Mugabe's men obsessively blame Britain, the old colonial power, for all Zimbabwe's problems today. Mugabe - a man who wears impeccable suits and drinks afternoon tea - is "half African and half British," says his biographer Heidi Holland, "and the two halves hate each other." In a Harare hotel, I meet Christopher Mutsvangwa, a ZANU supporter, businessman and former ambassador to China, whose clock seems to have stopped at independence in 1980. "Losing [Zimbabwe] was a very traumatic experience...
...from the man who has held it for more than a generation. The contrast between the two leaders was never greater than on Tsvangirai's recent foreign tour, during which he was feted by President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. At an African Union summit in Libya, meanwhile, Mugabe stormed out of a meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson, calling him an "idiot" for trying to "dictate...