More than 100 people have been killed. Many have been abducted, some probably never to be found again. Hundreds, thousands have been severely beaten, now in hospitals recovering from horrible wounds and fractures. Hunger is rampant, the monetary system destroyed, at least a quarter of the population sheltering in South Africa, Botswana and overseas countries as economic or political refugees.
One man is responsible for this national catastrophe, though his supporters share in his guilt: Robert Mugabe.
He told his police and party supporters, 'Bash them!' This is on record, it cannot be denied. The excuse that these atrocities are being committed by 'overenthusiastic' supporters without his knowledge and approval is demonstrably false. He does know and he approves.
Who is this man? Was he born such a fiend?
He grew up on a Catholic mission, Kutama, 90 km from Harare, where his father was employed as a carpenter. His mother was devoted to the Church and the bright young boy got a Catholic education in the family, from the French-Canadian Marist Brothers of Kutama College and his Jesuit parish priest, Fr Jerome O'Hea SJ.
He was very keen on his school work and was always seen with a book in his hand even when herding cattle. Father O'Hea thought highly of him and, like his stern mother, expected great things from him. He was a loner and reacted with anger to the other children making fun of him.
According to Heidi Holland, his recent biographer (Dinner with Mugabe, Penguin Books SA, 2008), he suffered a deep trauma when his father left wife and family to work in a faraway city where he married another woman. Suddenly the young boy was head of the family. Bright and ambitious, but essentially angry, lonely and insecure — that about seems to sum up young Robert.
Apparently he has never really changed. Just as he reacted with anger to this rejection by his father so he has reacted to any other rejection he had to endure in later life. The Rhodesians put him into detention without trial for 11 years, and when his only child, a little boy called Nhamo ('Suffering') born him by his beloved first wife Sally died in Ghana, they denied him permission to go and bury him. He has never forgotten.
After Independence he tried to reach out to the whites, even Ian Smith. They were happy enough that he did not touch them then, but,