Mugabe Dishonoured by Edinburgh University
Well, at last the University of Edinburgh has decided to strip Mugabe of his honorary degree. Thank you to the Scotland on Sunday newspaper for running a campaign towards achieving this end.
The newspaper wrote yesterday:
Behind the scenes, the university authorities changed their own rules to allow a degree to be removed, after first checking whether they had the legal authority to do so. In April, the university’s Academic Senate commissioned three of its own professors, including a legal expert, to examine whether there were grounds for removing the award.
The University appears to claim they didn’t know, at the time, about the Gukurahundi massacres taking place in Zimbabwe on Mugabe’s instruction. At the same time that they were handing him over a degree, his 5th Brigade were slaughtering people in Matabeleland.
The “three wise men” will this week report to the Senate that information about Mugabe, which was not to hand in 1984, has since become available. Their report links Mugabe and his regime to brutal purges in the south-west of the country against the minority Matabele people in the early 1980s.
At the time of the incidents, many observers defended the regime, claiming the killings and beatings were the result of a lack of control over an army fighting against South African subversion and struggling to control opponents intent on murdering white farmers and destabilising the country. Many believed, moreover, that the accusations were the result of propaganda from Apartheid-era South Africa.
The massacres are so much a part of my experience that it seems incredible to me that the horror of this was going on with people not knowing – or so they claim.
I would have thought, at the very least, the University would have had some doubts. This transcript of a Fergal Keane interview with Pius Ncube reveals that Donald Trelford of The Observer (UK), had at least written one article in the UK about the atrocities. Surely that would have been enough to put doubt into the University’s mind? Surely they’d have double-checked everything before doing something so incredible as to bestow honors on a potential mass-murderer?
The same interview I mention above has a quote from Sir Martin Ewans which utterly horrifies me, and I can’t help wondering if this was the prevailing view at the time:
We had very much an eye to what was happening in South Africa at the time with apartheid and we were hopeful that Zimbabwe would be something of a contrast, and South Africans would look at Zimbabwe and say ah yes, it is possible to work with as multiracial society. So I think Matabeleland is a side issue. The real issues were much bigger and more positive and more important.
There are several things in my mind right now. First, yes, I’m delighted he has been stripped of his honorary degree, but I’m not rushing to pat Edinburgh University too hard on the back about it. The real horror for me is that he was ever awarded it in the first place. The insult and offense of that action to the more than 20,000 murdered, and all their families, is immense. I doubt Edinburgh University will apologise for getting it so wrong – it seems more like they’ll claim ignorance. But I hope they learned a lesson from this.
Will the University of Massachusetts follow suit?
If you, like those at the University of Edinburgh, don’t know what happened in Zimbabwe in the early 1980s, then please buy this book.
June 4th, 2007 18:39
Please lets be totally honest about the situation in Zimbabwe. yes things are really really bad but lets not try to blow things out of propotion. The only thing likely to hurt you in Zim is inflation not all the violence preached about. we are statistically the fifth safest country in Africa and anyone whose’s been to Harare will testify. A people without a history are a people without a future but lets not history cloud our future.
June 5th, 2007 14:02
Zimbabwe is safe for as long as you keep your mouth shut dont complain and dont demand normal human rights and dignity that everyone else in the world takes for granted. I do not believe this can be called safe. I have had a gun pointed at me while my four year old daughter screamed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Believe you me I did not feel safe then. Oh and to inflation…when children are being forced to go hungry because someone messed up the economy…I can tell you they do not feel safe then.
June 5th, 2007 16:10
Oh come off it, TZ – Try telling those slaughtered in Matabele land that things are “proportion”. Statistical saftety means nothing in a country with such a low life expectancy due to AIDS and poverty. Statistical safety means nothing to those thousands currently being terrorised by Mugabe’s regime. A true Zimbabwean would be appalled at the depths to which this country, once so full of potential, has sunk.
June 5th, 2007 22:40
I am trully shocked by people who confuse the fear induced calmness that is in Zimbabwe for safety. TZ you can not be trully Zimbabwean if you fail to acknowledge the real issues in Zimbabwe today. Safety is not just about being mugged on a street corner. As a nation we have not been safe since this man came into power. We have been psychologically traumatised to normalize the abnormal. When a government kidnaps a copse, punches the opposition and the head of state brags about it on television saying ‘vakarakashwa’ you know you are in trouble. Please lets not be simplistic lest history judges us harshly.
June 8th, 2007 18:34
This is a good start hopefully others will follow.
June 11th, 2007 20:36
Mugabe might be partially to blame for the situation in Zimbabwe but it falls squarely on all Zimbos. even in a household when a father falters, you dont go around the neighbourhood whining like little boys and asking people not to assist. Pertaining to the Aids case, raised, Do you know that Zim is the only sub sahara country not receiving free ARVs or Aids assistance under the guise of sanctions? we the first country to have an aids levy also. the opposition goes about asking for power to be cut and fuel supplies blocked. So all in all, Zim has a dysfunctional goverment and a dead opposition! until we get more serious politicians , opposition or ruling, we aint going no where as a nation. by the way, how many people have fled the country? real men stay and fight not flee. Give me freedom or give me death! if it wasnt for academic purposes id be still in zim but the degree isnt offered there but il be there to stand up for wut i believe in when the time comes. food for thot!
June 16th, 2007 01:23
Oh come of it TZ. The fact that you are not in Zimbabwe explains a lot. If your degree was available at the UZ would you go there really… You are not in Zim coz you have choices which is more than can be said of millions of Zimbabweans youths whose fate is derilict lecture rooms, paltry payouts and no prospects after they finish their degrees. The oppossition did not mess up the country …Mugabe did. Despite ZANU PF’s propaganda which you seem to believe the only sanctions the west has placed on Zimbabwe are personal travel bans and freezing of illgotten gains that had been syphoned into European bank accounts by our esteemed leaders. We have not qualified for the aids fund because they messed up the proposal…this is true not because anyone hates us. Bilatereal development aid we wont get because our very esteemed leader tells the west to go hang.. while we the massses continue to do on a daily basis. However for your information the west still gives significant amounts in humanitarian aid…. i dont believe in this because it creates dependency but this is what Mugabe has reduced us to.. a once proud self reliant people to a nation that is pitied. I have no patience with armchair critics. Mugabe is not partially to blame… he is to blame.
June 21st, 2007 14:05
Truly Zimbo above seems to be tormented by a “greenbomber” mentality or the ancient gladiator testosterone. In the same breath the authour prescribes and proscribes. Stand there and fight like a man! Dont cut and run like a sissie!Haaaha! Truly Zimbo enough! The greenbomber, one-way thinking tendency. One is either with the people or without them. The people who are not in Zimbabwe only lack death certicifates but they are considered as dead people, not allowed the vote by the silly zimbos who rule the dying country except if you are on a govt holiday/vacation in the meaningless embassies the zimbo govt has planted across the entire planet. Because to work for Zim embassy is like being on paid govt vacation/leave, paid in forex, you dont have to have qualifications(like in international relations) but strong corrupting relations.
Let me just end this discourse by saying that the fight for democracy and against dictator is multidemensional and not limited by the space you occupy on the planet. Nearness to the dictator may give you an advantage to eat the crumbs from his table, to shoot him or slash him by the sword or to polish his boots. But “awayness” makes fighters for justice and democracy adopt other strategies, use of the pen not a dagger, internetdiscourse which is soon to intercepted by the new law, cultivate home connections to keep those who fighting fight. When it comes foreign currency even the regime likes what the “dead aways” send back to their relatives who may be to weak to leave the grave in which they are buried alive- a new gukurahundi chapter the nation is going through. I can only hope that if you are seious about issues you will get out of the greenbomber mentality and realize that the view given by govt controlled media is propaganda or a lalaby for the lame minds.
Mahmood Abaza
August 16th, 2007 23:06
True Zimbabwean, I take it you are posting this while living in the country?
June 5th, 2007 16:25
Man without honour…
I missed the Sunday papers, but I am glad I spotted the news that The University of Edinburgh have managed to strip Robert Mugabe of his honorary degree (via This Is Zimbabwe).
Its a gesture, but an important step in discrediting this dictator, and …