Real Dictators - Robert Mugabe Part 2: The Leopard’s True Spots…

Episode Date: November 16, 2022

Mugabe is now the leader of independent Zimbabwe. But behind the façade of democracy, he is already governing through fear. Emboldened, he unleashes a campaign of genocide on his opponents. For now, for the most part, the international community turns a blind eye. But the arrival of a new prime minister - not in Zimbabwe but in faraway Britain - will herald Mugabe’s first great crisis… A Noiser production, written by Duncan Barrett. This is Part 2 of 4. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. It's just after midnight on April the 18th, 1980. We're in Salisbury, the capital of Rhodesia, Zimbabwe. The Rufaro Stadium is packed to the rafters and all eyes are on a single piece of fabric.

After a century of white rule, the Union Jack is being run down the flagpole. Robert Mugabe and his Zanu guerrillas have finally brought true independence to the country, and the people have rewarded him by making him Prime Minister. The British flag is folded away, and a new banner is run up in its place. As the red, yellow, black and green stripes of Zimbabwe flutter in the bright lights of the stadium, soldiers fire a 21-gun salute. The crowd erupts in ecstatic cheers. Everyone who's anyone is there to share the historic moment. Prince Charles, India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi,

Australia's Premier Malcolm Fraser, UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim. Bob Marley and the Wailers are on hand to serenade the crowd with their anthem, Zimbabwe. Mugabe addresses his people. An avowed Marxist with ties to North Korea and China, he knows he must win the trust of the conservative white population, not to mention the international community. The wrongs of the past must now stand forgiven and forgotten, Mugabe announces.

If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you've become a friend. If yesterday you hated me, today you cannot avoid the love that binds you to me and me to you. They're powerful words, and for a country still reeling from 15 years of civil war, the prospect of reconciliation is appealing. But can this new statesman like Mugabe be trusted? After all, it's easy to be magnanimous when you're the one holding all the cards. Just a few months earlier, he was an unbending paramilitary leader with a string of atrocities to his name. Cracks will soon begin to show. Before long, the people of Zimbabwe and eventually the world will see the kind of ruler he truly is.

From Noisa, this is part two of the Mugabe story. And this is Real Dictators. is real dictators. At the Independence Day ceremony, the mood is triumphant. But amidst the jubilation, Mugabe receives a word of warning. You have inherited a jewel in Africa, Tanzania's president, Julius Nyerere, tells him. Don't tarnish it. To begin with, he appears to take the advice to heart.

Surprisingly for a revolutionary Marxist, Mugabe's administration emphasizes continuity as much as change. He settles into his predecessor Ian Smith's official residence without even changing the furniture. With his quota of 20 white MPs, Smith will play the secondary role in the political process. In fact, Mugabe invites the former leader back to visit more than once to dispense advice on running the country. At Smith's suggestion, Mugabe appoints a couple of white cabinet ministers. At Smith's suggestion, Mugabe appoints a couple of white cabinet ministers, and at the state opening of parliament, the two men walk into the chamber side by side. At times the new government's willingness to work with their former oppressors is astonishing. Mugabe's security minister is Emerson Munangagwa, a former guerrilla fighter still known by

his wartime moniker, the Crocodile. Captured by the white regime 15 years earlier, Munangagwa endured horrific torture. On his first day in the job, he pays a visit to the police station where he was held. He inspects the butcher's hooks from which his body was suspended, and even meets some of the men who tortured him. When they tell him they were just doing their jobs, he reassures them that the slate has been wiped clean. This conciliatory approach across government

helps reassure Zimbabwe's white community, staving off a potential exodus that Mugabe knows could crash the economy. Of the 200,000 whites still living in the country, around 90% choose to remain. Some racial tensions persist. The white minority still controls around half of Zimbabwe's farmland. But the Lancaster House Agreement, which brought an end to the Liberation War, imposed a ten-year moratorium on forced redistribution. Instead, a limited land reform programme begins, operating on a willing buyer, willing seller basis, and underpinned by a generous donation from the British government. The bigger issue remains, but for now, the can has been kicked down the road. To begin with, the most striking changes in Zimbabwe are symbolic ones.

Statues of Cecil Rhodes are taken down. Streets, squares and buildings named for white imperialists are rechristened after black African luminaries. In time, the capital city, Salisbury, is given a new name, Harare. But it's a far cry from the Marxist revolution that Mugabe's opponents feared. Indeed, within Zanu's ranks there are murmurs that things aren't moving fast enough. Mugabe exhorts his comrades to be patient. The economic structure of this country is based on capitalism, he tells them. Whatever ideas we have, we must build on that. Dr. Chipo Dendere.

He was a Marxist-Socialist capitalist, if that makes sense. He knew that in order to get the economy working, you've got to keep the capitalism, which is why they don't do land reform. They wait on land reform for as long as they can. So they get it. They get that you need the capitalism. You need to make it work. They also quickly realized that socialism, 100% socialism, isn't going to work.

Socialism, 100% socialism isn't going to work. Dr. Sue Onslow. We're going to have Afro-nationalism and then further down the way there'll be social equity. But that push for social equity came further and further away. For now though, most Zimbabweans are more than satisfied with the gradual pace of change. And with economic growth at 24% over the first two years, goodwill is at an all-time high.

Gabriel Shumba was seven years old when Mugabe came to power in 1980. So it was a period that was pregnant with hope. We were fully liberated and we looked ahead with anticipation and expectation for good things to come. The euphoria was just something palpable. Journalist Geri Jackson. It had been so awful. The war had been so awful. So many friends killed, black and white. You, of course,

had the diehards on both sides. But in the middle was this huge sway of people who just wanted it to work, who just wanted it to get on, and were prepared to give anything a go. You know, just let's not fight ever again. Let's just be happy. In the early years, the people's optimism is rewarded. Mugabe's government makes great strides in expanding access to healthcare and, perhaps unsurprisingly for a former teacher, education. Soon Zimbabwe offers the best schooling in Africa, something every citizen can be proud of. Once the uncompromising rebel, schooling in Africa, something every citizen can be proud of.

Once the uncompromising rebel, Mugabe recasts himself in a new role as Zimbabwe's stern but fair headmaster. Growing up, it was always, you need to speak like the president. That's what our public speaking coach would say. You need to speak like the president. And I remember even our high school English teacher was very much like, you have to emulate the president, right? He's this educated man, he's smart. Zimbabwe is doing better than the rest of the continent

and it's because we've got good leadership. So there was a lot of respect for this. On the world stage too, Mugabe's star is in the ascendant. He develops good relations with both Britain and the United States, without alienating his communist allies in the Far East. As a key member of the Non-Aligned Movement,

a group of former colonial nations that refused to take sides in the Cold War, he presides over a period of prosperity. Not for nothing is Zimbabwe referred to as the breadbasket of Africa. Growing up on his parents' farm in the east of Zimbabwe, Douglas Rogers sees the economic boost firsthand. We were a huge tourist destination, massive successful tobacco farming, agriculture was booming. It was a prosperous time.

The 80s, I suppose, until the early 1990s were a thriving time for Zimbabwe. From the outside, Zimbabwe is the great African success story. But within the halls of power, old conflicts rumble on. Nine months on from independence, Mugabe's longtime rival, Joshua Nkomo, remains bitter. Long seen as the father of Zimbabwean independence, Nkomo and his party, ZAPU, received a drubbing at the ballot box.

Reluctantly, he's accepted a role in Mugabe's first cabinet, as Minister of Home Affairs, but there's certainly no love lost between them. Out of 23 seats in the cabinet, Nkomo's party has been given only four. None of them, apart from his own, are positions of any real importance. To add insult to insult, at the Independence Day celebrations at the Rufaro Stadium, Mugabe had snubbed Nkomo by putting him and his wife in the cheap seats. In January 1981, Mugabe takes Nkomo down a peg further.

In a surprise cabinet reshuffle, he demotes him to minister without portfolio. Now, Mugabe's ZANU-PF controls every major ministry of state. And Como can still call on 20,000 loyal fighters. They belong to his guerrilla organization, the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army, known as ZIPRA. ZIPRA have yet to be integrated into the regular army. Already disputes between them and Mugabe's own guerrilla, Zanla, have led to bloody street fighting.

After Encomo's demotion, the feud erupts into an all-out battle in a suburb of Bulawayo. The town's name, in the local Ndebele language, means place of slaughter. It turns out to be chillingly appropriate. As the two groups exchange fire, the old Rhodesian army seeks to restore order. In a three-way struggle that lasts for two days, more than 300 people are killed. Mugabe is determined to crush Nkomo once and for all. Thanks to a secret deal signed with North Korea, a crack team of military instructors is brought in to train up Mugabe's Zanla men.

And Komo accuses Mugabe of raising his own partisan army. and Como accuses Mugabe of raising his own partisan army. Operating outside of the official military, Mugabe's new 5th Brigade makes the fighters of the Liberation War look like Boy Scouts. Election monitor Stephen Chan witnessed one of the brigade's passing out parades. Basically this march pass was one of marching in formation with goose step. It's quite spectacular. Marching in formation and shouting and basically just looking fierce. I just remember thinking this lot are not going to be very, very good for what we might regard as a stable, peaceful region.

On February 7th, 1982, Mugabe makes a shocking announcement. A secret cache of weapons has been discovered at a farm linked to Nkomo. A week later, at a Valentine's Day rally, Mugabe publicly denounces him, accusing Nkomo of plotting a coup. Having Zarpu members in his cabinet, Mugabe says, is like keeping a cobra in the house. The only way to deal effectively with a snake, he tells the crowd, is to strike and destroy its head. Mugabe's strike comes the very same day

and Nkomo is expelled from the government. Farms, businesses and other properties are seized. Among them is Nkomo's own home. Fearing for his life, in time Nkomo will flee the country, spending five months in the UK. According to a government spokesperson, the 21-stone political veteran will cross the border disguised as a fat old woman.

Safely holed up in a terraced house in East London, Nkomo will dismiss this story as nonsense. True or not, it's just another attempt by Mugabe to humiliate him. In the wake of Nkomo's sacking, hundreds of former Zipra guerrillas desert the regular Zimbabwean army, taking their weapons with them. They retreat to Matabeleland, a region in the southwest of the country, home to Nkomo's Ndebele tribe. They embark on a chaotic spree of violence, looting and pillaging local shops and businesses, holding up buses, even kidnapping a group of foreign tourists. Marched into the jungle,

the six men, two Brits, two Americans, and two Australians, are murdered after three days. For Mugabe, it's the excuse he's been waiting for, to unleash the 5th Brigade. With the help of the National Security Minister, the crocodile Emerson Manangagwa, the Brigade is ordered to hunt down Zipra in Matabele land. But they don't limit themselves to dealing with the former guerrillas, who number a few hundred at most. Instead they embark on a horrific campaign against the Ndebele people. Rape, torture and public executions soon become everyday occurrences. The code name for the operation is Kukuruhundi, a Shona word meaning the rain which washes away the chaff and its goals are nothing short of genocidal.

No one knows how many were killed. Estimates are 20,000 but probably more than that. It was an absolute reign of terror, a crushing of the opposition. terror, a crushing of the opposition. Mugabe is drawing on long-standing animosity between Zimbabwe's two main tribes, the majority Shona and the minority Ndebele. Journalist Nathan Dodzo. So behind the political climate,

you've got a tribal war happening in the back, where you've got different provinces also fighting and saying that we are the true inhabitants of this land, you know, or we are the ruling elite of this land. So that's where a lot of the tension really came from. The 5th Brigade use bazookas to obliterate civilians, leaving scattered body parts as a warning to others. They like to shoot their victims in the toilet, civilians, leaving scattered body parts as a warning to others.

They like to shoot their victims in the toilet, mixing filth with filth, as they put it. Despite their distinctive red berets, they're a world apart from any regular army. On the surface, the horrific campaign does its job. The Ndebele's fall in line, publicly praising ZANU-PF and singing songs in Shona. Outside local ZANU headquarters, they queue for hours for party membership cards that offer some chance of safety. After two years of brutalisation, and with an election looming, Mugabe issues a thinly veiled threat. Is it war, or is it peace tomorrow? he asks ominously.

Let the people of Matabeleland answer this question. But in the privacy of the ballot box, Mugabe's support for Joshua Nkomo remains strong. Once again, his party wins all 15 Matabele seats in Parliament. So Mugabe changes tack. Hundreds of ZAPU members are arrested, including five MPs, and the party's rallies and meetings are shut down. Eventually a beleaguered Nkomo gives in. He agrees to merge what's left of ZAPU with Mugabe's ZANU-PF and return to government in a purely symbolic role.

It pushed Nkomo into signing an accord with Mugabe and sort of selling his soul in a way. It was a horrible time and it has left a big wound in the country. It has not been forgotten. Outside Matabeleland, for now at least, the Gokuru hundi is kept largely under wraps, thanks to an affected government news blackout. Till this day, no one really wants to even admit what happened

or that they know what happened. I never knew too much until I actually visited the provinces in my tabela land and then people were talking because there was a lot of anger. And the sad part really about all this is this is something that people fought to get liberated from. We fought a liberation struggle to liberate us from such atrocities. And then now those atrocities are happening under the liberator. You know, that's sad, to say the least. Then people start to question, well, what did we actually fight for? What was the struggle for?

When Amnesty International produces a dossier of alleged Fifth Brigade crimes, Mugabe dismisses them as a heap of lies. The international community, heavily invested in the idea of Zimbabwe as an African success story, opts not to ask too many questions. I think the world was so desperate for a hopeful story, for a good narrative. And so we did what we often do everywhere, not just in Zimbabwe, where we look to the side. People are treating what's happening in Matabeleland as, oh, you know, they're just dealing with dissidents instead of, wait, wait a minute, this is something we need to be paying attention to. minute. This is something we need to be paying attention to.

For Mugabe, the Gokuro-Hundi is a success. The brutalisation of Nkomo's base and the absorption of Zapu into his own party gives him all but one of the black seats in parliament. Once Ian Smith's quota of white MPs expires, Zimbabwe becomes effectively a one-party state. But Mugabe's thirst for total control is still not quenched. On December 30th 1987, he disbands the office of Prime Minister and makes himself Executive President instead. The new position gives him power to declare martial law, enables him to dissolve parliament on a whim, and removes any limit on his terms in office. The following year, the 5th brigade is disbanded.

Its job is done. On the international stage, Mugabe continues to play the African statesman. He personally launches the Commonwealth Declaration on Human Rights, apparently with no sense of irony. A few years later, he is even knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. But in his treatment of the Ndebele people, Mugabe has shown his true colours. He may have put the rhetoric of the liberation war behind him, but his methods of control remain the same. I don't think anyone really took that as a warning very seriously at the time.

Everyone hoped for the best and everyone was quite beguiled by the early rhetoric of Mugabe, which was very much in the theme of reconciliation. By the late 1980s, Mugabe's thoughts are turning to the future. His political legacy as the man who liberated Zimbabwe seems secure. But on the personal front, something is lacking. Mugabe remains devoted to his wife, Sally. But since their son Michael died while he was in prison, she has been unable to have any more children. Diagnosed with a deteriorating kidney condition, her health has become increasingly fragile.

As First Lady of Zimbabwe, Sally is beloved by the people, but Mugabe knows his wife's days are numbered. Secretly he begins looking for a successor. He finds the perfect candidate in a young woman named Grace Marufu. At 23, she's more than 40 years his junior. He was a secretary in his office, married to one of his army guys. He needed a child.

Grace was young, she was fertile. So I guess that was supposed to be the arrangement. She's very glamorous, very beautiful. And he had an affair with her, began an affair with her when he was still married to his first wife. He had a couple of children with Grace and they were to get married after Sally Mugabe died.

But now the affair remains a state secret. For the most part, government control of the media prevents such unflattering stories coming to light. But in October, 1988, Matabelilan newspaper The Chronicle breaks a story with serious repercussions. A number of high-ranking politicians have been involved

in a money-making scam. With demand for motor cars at an all-time high, they've abused their government positions to buy vehicles direct from the state-owned Willow Vale factory in Harare. They've then been selling them on, on the private market, at vastly inflated prices.

Five government ministers face prosecution for their part in what becomes known as Willowgate. For one of them, Morris Nyagumbu, the pressure is too much. One of them, Morris Nyagumbo, the pressure is too much. Before he can be brought to trial, he kills himself by swallowing rat poison. Only one of the remaining four ministers is convicted, and swiftly pardoned, after spending just one night in prison. Who among us has not lied, Mugabe says. Meanwhile, the editor of the Chronicle is fired on the president's orders. But the damage is done.

Corruption at the heart of ZANU-PF is a far cry from the Marxist utopia Mugabe once promised. And as it turns out, Willowgate is just the tip of the iceberg. You end up with this very disturbing combination of failed socialism, failed Marxism, and failing capitalism, and it all erupts into this big ball of corruption. It's in everything. It's at schools, at the clinics. The doctors are charging $250 a day to treat people, on top of whatever you're going to pay to the hospital.

Teachers are saying to parents, I'm not going to teach new material in class. If you want your kids to learn this new material, it's got to be done outside the class. And you pay me some fees. Meanwhile, in the upper echelons of society, the new elite make little effort to hide their wealth. Mugabe's inner circle are living the high life, with lavish mansions, fast cars, and

blowout parties. Their leader's disciplined temperament has largely shielded him from temptation, but increasingly, suspicions grow that he too sees the presidency as a means to an end. They always travelled a lot. Suspicions grow that he too sees the presidency as a means to an end. They always travelled a lot. I mean, I once joked in the on-radio that Mugabe had arrived back in the country for a state visit because he was away so much. He didn't want to be here.

They use this place as sort of like a bank. They plunder it and steal the money. But they go and live in Dubai or have a villa there or hang out. After 10 years in power, within Zimbabwe at least, Mugabe's halo is beginning to dim. In 1990, he faces his first serious political opposition since the absorption of Joseph Nkomo Zapu. A new party, the Zimbabwe Unity Movement, or ZUM, intends to contest the upcoming parliamentary

elections. At its head is Edgar Teckere. He's Mugabe's former prison mate, and also the man who invited Bob Marley to sing on Independence Day. A founder member of ZANU. Takeri's decision to oppose the party is an indication of how far they've strayed from their ideals. For some time, Mugabe's been talking up the virtues of a one-party state. With 99 out of 100 seats in parliament, he effectively already has one. But any wins for Takeri threatened to throw a spanner in the works. He was not somebody who could be tolerant of political diversity. He had been schooled under the communist approach because he had gotten his political philosophy from China and Russia. So you could tell that the issue of the one-party state was something that thrilled him.

This was the norm at the time after independence, this argument that we need stability. So this pushing for one-party states, I mean, a big man rule across the continent. And this was just what African leaders were doing at the time. across the continent. And this was just what African leaders were doing at the time. For Mugabe, the forthcoming election is a verdict on his decade in power. And he has no intention of leaving it to the whims of the electorate. His previous wins rested partly on voter intimidation.

This time, the threats are more open. Mugabe is working from the dictator's playbook now. He tells public sector workers that voting for Zoom is a sackable offence. And there's a warning for disgruntled white voters as well. If the whites in Zimbabwe want to rear their ugly terrorist and racist head by collaborating with Zoom, he announces, to rear their ugly terrorist and racist head by collaborating with Zoom, he announces, we will chop that head off. The starkest threat comes in a TV ad featuring a violent car accident, a favoured method of political assassination under Mugabe's regime.

This is one way to die, the voiceover declares, over shots of mourners carrying coffins. Another is to vote ZUM. On April 1st, the election results are announced. In the presidential poll, Tecure achieves just 17% of the vote, against 83% from Mugabe. Against the odds, however, Tekere has managed to score two seats in parliament. Reluctantly, Mugabe is forced to shelve his dream of a total one-party state. Zanupiev was a defect to a one-party state,

but it wasn't an official one-party state, and that difference is important. Time and time again, when this was put to vote in parliament, it failed. And that must have angered him a lot. And around the same time, after more than three decades together, Mugabe finally loses his wife, Sally. At the age of 60, she succumbs to the kidney disease she's suffered with

ever since he came to power. Mugabe may have moved on to another long ago, but the loss of his most trusted confidant is still a crushing blow. She was one of the few people who had the capacity to make him think again, to encourage him to reconsider his opinions, his judgment. She was a very shrewd judge of character. She had astute political instincts. She was very, very well regarded inside Zimbabwe. Three years later, news seeps out about Robert Mugabe's mistress, Grace. He can deny the affair no longer. Grace is granted a quickie divorce from her husband of 13 years, an officer in the Zimbabwean Air Force,

who finds himself unexpectedly posted to China. Sally died and he sent the husband abroad. Very, I don't know if anybody reads the Bible, but it's very King David. So you send the guy abroad, you marry the wife, and yeah. On August the 17th, 1996, Robert Mugabe's hometown of Kutama plays host to Zimbabwe's wedding of the century.

12,000 people descend on the small rural community. Among the guests, resplendent in one of his trademark patterned shirts, is Nelson Mandela, now president of the new post-apartheid South Africa. Mandela's stratospheric rise to power, not to mention his huge popularity on the world stage, threatens to eclipse Mugabe's legacy. But it's another leader whose premiership will prove the greatest thorn in Mugabe's side.

Tony Blair. After Blair's landslide victory in May 1997, Mugabe approaches him about increasing Britain's financial support for redistributing farmland in Zimbabwe. Blair's International Development Secretary, Claire Short, is having none of it. She tells Mugabe that the new Labour government has no ties to former colonial interests and, therefore, no special responsibility towards Zimbabwe. Mugabe is furious. responsibility towards Zimbabwe. Mugabe is furious. From where he's standing, the Brits are telling him that he has no right to play the race card. Short's letter to Mugabe will go down

in infamy. I still fail to understand how it got past astute civil servants, but it did. And so this incensed Zimbabwean nationalist pride. It was singularly ill-judged. With his London tailoring and bone china tea sets, Mugabe is a massive anglophile. But he finds in Tony Blair the first British prime minister that he simply cannot deal with. Ironically, Zimbabwean nationalists have commented that they had always got on better with Tory politicians, traditional conservative politicians, than they did with Labour politicians. It got to the point where the relationship between Blair and Mugabe was so fraught

that Blair even considered sending in an SAS hit squad to take out Mugabe. It didn't get anywhere. But the very fact that he even considered it is really quite something. But the very fact that he even considered it is really quite something. Time and again, Mugabe uses public appearances to take potshots at Blair, accusing him of meddling in Zimbabwean politics. Blair's new roster of MPs includes not just large numbers of women, but several openly gay politicians as well.

Mugabe claims Blair is exporting a gay philosophy around the world. Mugabe's genius was always to find an enemy. It later became white people, white farmers, right? But early on became the Ndebele and Zarpu. At some point it became homosexuals, homosexuality. He was always going on about homosexuals, which of course, as you can imagine, led to rumours about him. He really had a thing about gay people.

Mugabe's homophobia is nothing new. At an international publishing conference in 1995, he compared gay people to organised drug addicts and those given to bestiality. At the end of a furious speech, he announced defiantly, we don't believe that they have any rights at all. Increasingly though, homophobic rants become part of his rhetorical arsenal. Things come to a head during a shopping trip to London, when gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell attempts to perform a citizen's arrest on him. The British police intervene, Mugabe goes on to Harrods, and Tatchell is led away to a cell. When Mugabe accuses Blair of setting gay gangsters on him, it prompts an official government apology.

gangsters on him. It prompts an official government apology. For Mugabe, the broken relationship with Great Britain represents a kind of personal crisis. Mugabe has always loved England, loves Savile Row suits, loves Queen, loves all that stuff, drinks tea. The Chinese built a house for him. It's got a pagoda roof and it's got lions outside and it's very Chinese. But I think he would have liked to have lived in Buckingham Palace if he could. In some ways, he wanted to be an Englishman. He wanted to be respected in the way that he felt an Englishman was respected. Part of this was the discrimination and humiliation he felt growing up in a white minority regime. He's always craved respectability, particularly by white people. So it's a very, very contradictory picture of a very proud black man

who all the same craved this kind of validation. To compound his troubles abroad, a new threat to Mugabe's power emerges at home. In the late 1990s he finds himself at loggerheads with some of his most stalwart supporters, the veterans of the liberation war. Thirty years on many of the former guerrillas are approaching retirement age and they feel they've been treated extremely poorly. While Mugabe and his cronies have enriched themselves at the country's expense, those who brought him to power are still struggling.

Things reach boiling point at the funeral of Makoma Musa, a popular war vet who died in abject poverty. Brigadier Gibson Mashin-Gaidze, who has personally paid for Musa's burial, gives a blistering eulogy. He calls out the fat stomachs and luxury yachts of Mugabe's new oligarchy, asking, is this the ZANU-PF I trusted with my life? When Mugabe refuses to meet with the War Veterans Association, they send members to harass government ministers. The protest culminates in three days of action on the streets of Harare. Hundreds of veterans, many on crutches, descend on the city,

marching past Mugabe's office singing revolutionary songs. The following month, at the annual Heroes' Day ceremony at the National Monument, their angry chanting sees the president off the stage. By the time Mugabe finally agrees to meet with them, the war vets have built up some sizable demands, including pensions worth $2,000 a month for all 50,000 of them. The bulk of the fighting men and women had never received proper benefits, while he and those around him had received oligarchic benefits.

He didn't want, desperately did not want, to have the mantle of the father of liberation taken away from him. Uncharacteristically, Mugabe backs down. The bill for the new compensation package will run to an estimated $4 billion, and its money Zimbabwe simply doesn't have. You know, when you're a dictator who's holding on by your teeth, you are constantly trying to pay people off, right? So with the war veterans, they made these payouts that were not budgeted for, and there was no cushion to the economy. So the day after the payouts, I think it's remembered as Black Friday, where the economy just tanked. Overnight, the currency loses 70% of its value. By January 1998, the cost of basic necessities such as rice and cooking oil has doubled. Riots soon erupt throughout Harare, the worst street violence

since the days of the Liberation War. Mugabe calls in the army to maintain order. Over three days of action, thousands of protesters are arrested and at least eight are killed by the authorities. A 12-year-old girl is shot

attempting to flee the scene. As the riots rage on, the government struggles to control the narrative unfolding in the press. At this time, Jerry Jackson is working as a radio DJ at the state-run Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation. I myself got eventually fired for opening the phone lines during the first food riots. I was physically removed from the studio. I allowed people to speak freely because the police were shooting people in the streets and I didn't go down very well at all. You know, MacGyver just got more and more dictatorial and it became impossible to ignore.

There is a point at which you have to say no, so far and no further. I cannot sit here with a live microphone and ignore what's going on. And I was phoned down by the head of the radio station at the time. He said, what do you think you're doing? And I didn't think I was going to be fired. Actually, the head of the radio station said, I doubt you'll be fired, but, you know, I'm just taking you off air now. And then he phoned me a couple of days later and he said, I'm sorry, I'm firing you.

Apparently Mugabe was listening in his office. So he wants you gone. Harari has taken on something of a post-apocalyptic air. Once touted as the cleanest city in Africa, the streets are now strewn with uncollected rubbish, the roads potholed and the pavements cracked. More than half the population live in shanty towns. Unemployment is approaching 50%.

But rather than focus on improving conditions in his own country, Mugabe looks to foreign affairs. In Africa, at least, his name still means something. Since 1996, he's been in charge of defense and security at the Southern African Development Community. In 1998, when the Democratic Republic of Congo descends into its second civil war in as many years, Mugabe is determined to intervene. As tanks, planes and thousands of soldiers pour into the Congo, the bill for Mugabe's foreign adventure skyrockets.

Soon the conflict is costing him around a million US dollars a day. Money that should have been going to Zimbabwe was now going to fund a war. And what they then decided to do was just to print money to pay soldiers. And that produced inflation, massive inflation. And so it was the beginning of what became hyperinflation and the highest rate of inflation in the world. The total cost of Zimbabwe's intervention in the Congo is estimated at around a billion dollars. Casualty figures remain under wraps.

According to one Gallup poll, 70% of Zimbabweans oppose the operation. Criticism of the regime grows. We had uncles that had gone to the DRC to fight, and some of them hadn't come back. That really began conversations in and around our home on what was happening in the country. In February 1999, Mugabe celebrates his 75th birthday with an interview on state television. After two decades in power, he's characteristically unrepentant, blaming the country's woes on whites stuck in a colonial Rhodesian mindset, and accusing foreign diplomats of attempting to subvert his government. In reality, resistance to Mugabe within Zimbabwe is growing.

is growing. Six months later, a new opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, is founded by a man called Morgan Changaray. At 47, Changaray represents a stark contrast to the septuagenarian Mugabe. While the president boasts six degrees, Changaray never went to university. His crumpled suits and beaten-up Mazda are a world away from Mugabe's fast cars and stylish tailoring. In fact, he's long been calling on the government to cut down on the mercs and perks. With the next general election almost a year away, Changarai's sights are set on a more immediate goal, With the general election almost a year away, Chang'e's sights are set on a more immediate goal – redrafting Zimbabwe's constitution to create a proper democratic framework for the country, a system grounded in the law. In response, Mugabe has launched a constitutional commission of his own, attempting to take

the wind out of his opponent's sails. Predictably enough, Mugabe's proposed reforms, published in November 1999, are minimal. But by the time the new proposals are put to the public in a referendum the following year, Mugabe has personally added an amendment. In it, he addresses the long-awaited subject of land reform. From now on, Mugabe says, the government must be empowered to transfer white farms to black Zimbabweans without consulting the existing owners. And the burden of compensation will fall on the British government.

It's a hollow offer, since it relies on the Brits agreeing to foot a massive bill. But Mugabe believes it will appeal to rural voters. What he hasn't counted on is his own deep unpopularity. Morgan Changaray and the MDC are spearheading the No campaign, encouraging their supporters to vote against the reform. For many Zimbabweans, the referendum is not really about the constitution. It's a verdict on Mugabe's 20 years in office. The movement for democratic change was starting to also make inroads into the political arena. And that constitution became a tool for them.

I think people didn't quite know what they were voting for. All they were saying is no. But people are angry. That anger cuts across society. The MDC attracts not just the poor black workers represented by Changarai's unions, but many wealthy white Zimbabweans as well. I'd left Zimbabwe in the early 1990s. I was working as a travel writer and a journalist in the UK. But on successive visits back, I felt deep respect and admiration for my parents,

particularly my father, who actually became a member of the MBC, for the bravery of these people to go and monitor polling stations when you're really risking your life doing so. But again, I think this played into the hands of Mugabe at the same time, because he could then say, look, all these white people are involved in this political party. It was a catch-22, because as a white Zimbabwean, you feel Zimbabwean, and you should be engaged in the politics of your country. And in doing so, you're becoming white Zimbabwean, you feel Zimbabwean and you should be engaged in the politics of your country. And in doing so, you're becoming a Zimbabwean, right? But in also in doing so, Mugabe could then say, oh, you're white.

Look, this party is a stooge of whites. Mugabe makes every effort to cast the referendum as a racial conflict. 20 years ago, we fought them using AK rifles, runs an editorial in the state-controlled Sunday Mail. Today we're using a pen and ballot paper. But the message falls flat. After a campaign relatively free of violence and intimidation, at least by ZANU-PF standards, Mugabe has served up his first meaningful electoral defeat. 75% of the electorates stay at home, including most of his traditional rural base, and those that do turn out vote decisively to reject his new constitution.

The majority of no-votes come from black urban areas. For the first time, he's clearly lost the support of his people. When Mugabe appears on TV to respond to the result, he plays the part of the humble public servant. Let us all accept the verdict and plan the way forward, he suggests, his hand shaking as he reads from a script. I remember watching TV and Mugabe said he accepted the results which were not in his favour.

And I turned to a friend of mine who was watching with me and I said, we're in deep trouble now. Privately, Mugabe is furious. At an emergency meeting of ZANU-PF's central committee, the recriminations begin flying. Some of Mugabe's colleagues suggest perhaps it's time for him to step down, but he's defiant, blaming the defeat on his underlings. They didn't fight a strong enough campaign. Already, after the referendum, everyone's eyes are on the general election four months down the road. For the first time, the prospect of ZANU-PF losing power seems a real possibility.

To prevent that, they will use every weapon in their arsenal. The MDC must be crushed. Seven months earlier, Mugabe's old nemesis Joshua Nkomo died of prostate cancer at the age of 82. But in Mugen Changirai, a new rival has emerged. For Zimbabwe, the general election will be a turning point. Mugabe's vendetta will wreck the country's economy for generations. And he will turn himself into an international pariah in the process.

Morgan Changite was a very strong guy, and I don't think Robert Mugabe expected that sort of resilience, that sort of pushback. They really tried to work within the channels of how do you get a dictator out? It's just that elections aren't as effective for kicking out dictators. Next time on Real Dictators... Mugabe's battle with Chiang Rai turns increasingly bloody. Zimbabwe's white farmers are targeted in a brutal campaign that sees thousands lose their properties and some their lives. The economy will enter freefall, taking what's left of Mugabe's popular support with it.

That's next time on Real Dictators.