Robert Mugabe the megalomaniac dictator of Zimbabwe died today at the age of 95. He became the President of erstwhile Rhodesia, later renamed as Zimbabwe in the early 1980s after the country got its independence from Great Britain.
The young nation put a lot of hope on the man who was educated with multiple degrees - a teacher turned politician. But slowly he turned into a ruthless dictator who ruled the Southern African nation with an iron hand.
The Elephant eating (no pun, he actually feasted on an elephant on his 90th birthday), nonagenarian African dictator Robert Mugabe did everything to take his country Zimbabwe into an abyss of elephantine proportion. The country's economy was in shambles. It's said that you have to carry a sac of Zimbabwean Dollars to buy a bag of grocery in that nation.
Mugabe practiced what we can call as reverse racism - driving away the white minority, who were mostly farmers and formed the backbone of their economy and cricket. Imagine if he would have been White and drove away the black minority in that nation. Zimbabwe would faced severe sanctions, in the same boat as South Africa during the heydays of Apartheid, banned from all international sporting events.
In that context, the hypocrisy of the African Union and rest of the world about Mugabe can't be ignored. They were conspicuously silent when Mugabe practiced reverse racism.
He was not the only African leader who betrayed his supporters. India once backed Nelson Mandela, the President to neighboring South Africa, supporting him tooth and nail during the heydays of apartheid, eventually bestowing him with India's highest Civilian Award named BHATAT RATNA (The Jewel of India).
What was Mandela's reciprocity to India's magnanimous overture of giving its highest honor, rarely given to someone outside India ? He wanted to mediate between India and Pakistan on Kashmir, fully aware of India's sensitivity towards outside mediation in Kashmir. Go figure. It's another example of those we help at their time of crisis leave no stones unturned when it comes to hurt us.
The game of cricket was the collateral damage due to Mad Man Mugabe who drove away who formed the backbone of the nation's cricket team. He can very well be credited for hammering down the final nails on its cricket coffin. Zimbabwe once a promising cricket playing nation on an upswing, is now struggling to keep afloat its test playing nation status - thanks to Mugabe
Here are some quotes attributed to the Zimbabwe ex-President:
1) "When your clothes are made of cassava leaves, you don’t take a goat as a friend."
2) "If you are ugly, you are ugly. Stop talking about inner beauty because men don’t walk around with X-ray machines to see inner beauty"
3) "When one’s goat gets missing, the aroma of a neighbour’s soup gets suspicious."
4) "Treat every part of your towel nicely because the part that wipes your buttocks today will wipe your face tomorrow".
5) "If President Barack Obama wants me to allow marriage for same-sex couples in my country (Zimbabwe), he must come here so that I marry him first."
6) "What is the problem with deporting white men from Africa? We now have aeroplanes which can take them back quicker than the ships used by their ancestors."
8) Interviewer: "Mr President, when are you bidding the people of Zimbabwe farewell?".
Robert Mugabe: "Where are they going?"
9) "If I am given chance to travel through time, I will go back to 1946 and find Donald Trump's father and give him a condom"
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