INTROD U CTION
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shifting the power balance in his favour at the cost of great loss of life. Mugabe is part of the Shona ethnic group but came to power in partnership with Joshua Nkomo, a member of the Ndebele* tribe, which violently dominated the Shona in the pre-colonial era. Between 1983 and 1985, Mugabe broke the Ndebele as a rival political force by means of a militarised programme of terror, ‘Gukurahundi’,† in which at least 20,000 people were killed. The Western world averted its gaze from the death pits of Matabeleland. Governments wilfully ignored emerging evidence of the massacres and, once eventually assured that the horrible reports were true, declined to prevent Mugabe or even to criticise him as he eradicated his opponents in their thousands. He appeared to be an impressive and moderate leader, so the West calculated that intervention or criticism would bring much risk and little benefit. Mugabe learned a vital lesson that still serves him well – he can kill to retain power and the world will do no more than watch. Needless to say, African states and the wider non-aligned movement ignored the death cries of the Ndebele too. The Cold War was still hot. The main battle in Southern Africa was to smash apartheid, not to protect the rights of minorities already liberated from white domination. Nobody was going to criticise a powerful Marxist pin-up like Mugabe. We will never know if Mugabe would have continued on this course of business-friendly, albeit increasingly dictatorial, rule. A number of events coincided in the late 1990s the combined effect of which was to blow him irretrievably off whatever course he had set. Externally, the election of Tony Blair in 1997 changed the cosy relationship that Mugabe had enjoyed with the Thatcher and Major Governments. New Labour placed great emphasis on development and on Africa. A new ministry, the Department for International Development (DFID), was created to deliver * Known also as the Matabele, the Ndebele are Zimbabwe’s Zulus and live mostly in its Southern provinces around Bulawayo. † A Shona word meaning ‘the early rain that washes away the chaff ’.
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