[Western institutions gave Mugabe honorary degrees. Taken over by jews, "Western" seats of learning have become intellectual shitholes of subversion. They deserve to be burned down, and their cadres-disguised-as-professors slaughtered.]
EDINBURGH University in Scotland and the United States’ University of Massachusetts and Michigan State University are considering recalling the honorary doctorate of laws degrees they conferred on Robert Mugabe.
This campaign, its timing and the rhetoric behind it are the epitome of Western hypocrisy, an insult to all victims of state-sanctioned violence in Zimbabwe, Gukurahundi victims in particular.
Robert Mugabe’s honorary degrees should stay. They represent a period of madness in history where a genocidal dictator went on the rampage and the international community, the West in particular, either looked the other way or cheered him on. Any university that respects human rights should never ever have awarded Mugabe an honorary degree during the 1980s or any other period. A public apology to Zimbabweans is the only sincere protest against Mugabe’s rule that these universities can offer.
The three universities awarded Mugabe the degrees during the watershed decade of government crackdown on political dissent under the guise of fighting rebels in Matabeleland and the Midlands. State-directed violence punctuated 1984, 1986 and 1990, the years, respectively,
Edinburgh University,
University of Massachusetts and
Michigan State University, honoured Mugabe. Edinburgh University is reportedly reviewing the dictator’s honorary degree. Recall petitions are under way at the two US universities.
The period 1980 to 1983 was the most critical with mass disappearances, beatings, rape and murder of innocent villagers. [Monkey Mugabe took power in 1980] With the urging of then Minister of State Security, Emerson Mnangagwa, the North Korea-trained 5th Brigade, Central Intelligence Organization and Zanu PF militias “burned down the villages infested with dissidents”. Hundreds were burned alive in their huts.
Thousands were shot in public executions. At Lupane on March 5, 1983, for example, the 5th Brigade rounded up and shot 62 young men and women on the banks of the Cewale River. 55 died and seven survived with gunshot wounds. Often, the 5th Brigade forced the victims to dig their own graves in front of family and fellow villagers.
In places like Tsholotsho state-sponsored terror forces routinely rounded up dozens or even hundreds of civilians and marched them at gun point to a central place. There they forced them to sing songs praising Mugabe and Zanu PF, before executing them.
These atrocities continued in 1984, the year Edinburgh University awarded Mugabe an honorary doctorate of law. The New York Times of June 21 even reported that “Robert Mugabe’s supporters went on a rampage and killed five supporters of Joshua Nkomo in Kwekwe”.
In the same year, it was clear that Mugabe intended to tighten his already fledgling dictatorial rule. With the forced merger with ZAPU in
1987 in mind,
the Zanu PF congress created the notorious Politburo and adopted a new party constitution that called for the creation of a Marxist-oriented one party state.
In 1986, the year the University of Massachusetts awarded Mugabe an honorary doctorate of law degree, the New York-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights reported that Mugabe’s forces continued the “systematic campaign of terror and repression against the minority Ndebele-speaking people…”
By the time of reconciliation in 1987, up to a variously-reported 20 000 innocent people had been murdered. Ironically, the following year, Mugabe extended a complete amnesty to all perpetrators of violence and pardoned mass murderers on both sides of the conflict. By pardoning the murderers, Mugabe personally assumed culpability for their heinous crimes.
It’s important to point out that to this day, no official apology has been extended to the victims. Many continue to grapple with the trauma. To achieve real harmony between the minority Ndebele and the rest of the country in the post-Mugabe era, Zimbabweans will have to engage in an emotional, lengthy and potentially-divisive “truth and reconciliation” process.
Michigan State University honored Mugabe in 1990, the same year Zanu PF supporters unleashed Gukurahundi-style violence on supporters of the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) during the general election. Five candidates were murdered.
Those considering rescinding the degrees are simply trying to rewrite history and absolve themselves from culpability. They are engaging in a spectacular act in self-cleansing and self-exoneration. An honour is not the piece of paper it is written on. It is something intangible, a value. In the collective Zimbabwean memory is etched the horror of Gukurahundi and the validation Mugabe received through numerous honors.
Mugabe’s name will indelibly decorate the roster of exemplary global citizens. Since 1885, the University of Massachusetts has awarded nearly 2,000 honorary degrees to world leaders, renowned scholars and writers. Other recipients include former UN Secretary General, Kofi Anani, Toni Morrison and Nelson Mandela, both Nobel Prize laureates. At Michigan State University Mugabe joins former US President Bill Clinton and former Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chretien.
By inducting Mugabe into this exclusive club, the universities ignored the victims of Mugabe’s violent rule. They abused the sanctity of honorary degrees. An honorary degree is awarded as a decoration for exemplary global citizenship. According to University of Massachusetts policy, honorary degrees are awarded out to people "of great accomplishment and high ethical standards.''
So, what really happened? Why did these and other Western universities fete and honor the dictator in spite of all these glaring atrocities? Mugabe may be a serial honorary degree collector but he applied for none of them. He was nominated and selected. Let’s not forget that the nomination process is stringent. Several persons are nominated. A strict committee review follows prior to approval.
There can only be one reason why the Gukurahundi massacres escaped the radar: euphoria. Even as Mugabe’s killing machine pulverised Matabeleland and the Midlands,
the West and much of the world were too ecstatic over the overthrow of the racist white regime of Ian Douglas Smith to notice. Mugabe was the hero of the day, a rare African statesman. These universities just had to be part of his celebrity status.
would-be killers, as long as their actions were deemed to be safeguarding the security of the country. The immunity was granted following the kidnapping of foreign tourists by the so called dissidents.
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The West used Mugabe and vice, versa. Mugabe had his double personality to thank. At his most Gukurahundi-era evil, he was the humane revolutionary who ended the oppressive white regime of Rhodesia. He either successfully masqueraded as the model of African democracy or the excitable West picked him for one. He successfully played the relentless anti-apartheid campaigner. He became the African international statesman the continent rarely produced.
We are not naïve to believe the Western assertion that Robert Mugabe now stinks. This is a new, repackaged accusation for an old crime. We are now witnessing a stampede to expose the real Robert Mugabe. On the surface the West has come to its senses and realized its faux pax. In reality, it’s all politics as usual. All universities have decisive protocol for awarding honorary degrees but none for their revocation. The three universities couldn’t just wake up in the morning and recall their degrees.
New rules for revocation would have to be drafted, debated and passed before they can be implemented. My guess is that Mugabe, now 83, will be lying comfortably in his grave before any of his honorary degrees are officially withdrawn.
The West’s double standard will not help its regime change agenda either. The lavish patronage Mugabe received at his most ruthless is fresh in the collective Zimbabwean memory. We are not blind to the sympathy currently lavished on some leaders of the struggle against the dictator.
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http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/opinion261.16302.html