M.D. Nalapat
Manipal, India — Zimbabwe's President
Robert Mugabe represents the other side of apartheid – the forced segregation
of races in a country where a single ethnic group dominates the rest. His macho
actions against the few remaining European-origin citizens living in Zimbabwe
may be psychologically satisfying to those who share his viewpoint. But the
fact remains that Zimbabwean whites have been as marginalized and dispossessed
as blacks were in South Africa till Nelson Mandela was finally released from
prison in 1990.
Mugabe's theatrics against the whites carry
little resonance among the populace – they have realized that reverse apartheid
has made their economic situation worse, not better. While most of the blame
for this rests on the commissar-style administration of the octogenarian head
of state, it has also been fuelled by the comprehensive economic boycott of
Zimbabwe by countries with European-origin majorities.
Having voluntarily handed over power to the
majority black population in 1980, Zimbabwe's whites had sufficient moral
justification to expect an honorable accommodation with the rest of the
population. Instead, they were soon rendered politically irrelevant, and their
properties sequestered by armed thugs loyal to the new master of the country.
It is fortunate for South Africa that
despite the example set by Mugabe, whites in that country went ahead with
democratization a decade later, with somewhat better consequences for
themselves than in Zimbabwe.
