Robert Mugabe, Kcb

Robert Mugabe KCB is about two countries forced into one by British imperialistic interests, cemented by the optimism of African nationalism and plundered by the wrath of Africa’s longest serving tyrant. It traces 19th Century King Mzilikazi and his peoples’ settlement in Matabeleland, through the colonization of Mashonaland in 1890, the destruction and occupation of the Ndebele State in 1893 by the B. S. A. Company before examining the politics of African nationalism by ZAPU and ZANU in the quest for black majority rule.

It dissects the gukurahundi genocide unleashed by the independent and majoritarian government on the ethnic minorities of Matabeleland and the Ndebele speaking parts of the Midlands province. It interrogates the concepts of gukurahundism (policy of annihilation), zanuism (longevity of the leader and his/her ethnic group) and mugabeism (mastery of demagoguery in order to deceive). It portrays the genocide, and the three isms as the four pillars that have sustained the leprosy that ravaged the Zimbabwean anatomy from day one of independence to two years after Mugabe’s unceremonious fall by the barrel of the same gun that had ushered him in in 1980.

Ncube explores possible solutions which include, a rotational presidency, devolution of government power, federalism, restoration of the Ndebele monarchy and the secession of the pre-colonial Mthwakazi State from Zimbabwe.