From Liberator to Dictator

by Michael Auret, foreword by Trevor Ncube

(David Philip Publishers, an imprint of New Africa Books (Pty) Ltd, SARands 143.00 / £19.95 / €15.95; orders@newafricabooks.co. za)

Peter Costello

Now in his early seventies Michael Auret lives in quiet retirement in rural Ireland. This is quite a change from the life he once led as a soldier, farmer, Catholic activist and politician in Zimbabwe. In this memoir he chronicles from his unique point of view the rise to power of Robert Mugabe, Jesuit-boy turned dictator. This is a book which everyone concerned not just about Zimbabwe, but about Africa as a whole should read. It is a remarkable document.

He begins the book with the Congo crisis back in early 1960s - though there seems to have been a continuous crisis there ever since. He sees that post-colonial disaster as the beginning of the malaise that infects modern Africa.

But the book comes right down to date chronicling his own changing perception of Robert Mugabe - the mysterious and psychologically impenetrable autocrat of his native Zimbabwe.

Leading

Like many in the 1960s he saw Mugabe as an imposing and impressive figure, a man capable of leading the country from the last days of colonial rule into a far fuller and peaceful future. But over the years these hopes evaporated. The massacres in Matabeland showed not only that Mugabe's desire to take and hold on to supreme power was focusedly ruthless, but that he would use the social, racial and tribal divisions of Zimbabwe in ensuring he did so.

Much of what Michael Auret writes about is in a general way well known, but his personal experiences of the events themselves gives his book a powerful hold on the reader. Now, while millions suffer from the economic and social chaos of Mugabe's dictatorship, the man himself lives in extraordinary opulence - following the example not of Gandhi and Mandela, but that of Bokassa and Mobutu Sésé Seko.

Michael Auret, however, sees these events from a Catholic point of view - Mugabe also being a Catholic, at least by upbringing and education, though he continues to expound a kind of ''Marxist'' rhetoric that has long been empty of any meaning. Auret's own years working for peace and justice show the sometimes equivocal role of some bishops in dealing with state power.

Influences

But this is Michael Auret's personal story as much as that of Zimbabwe and Mugabe. He writes of the great influences on his life. One of these was missionary Fr Patrick Galvin, an anthropologist who had closely studied the Shona people for a quarter of a century. He was a close family friend.

Auret remarked to him one day that he was puzzled that the workmen on his farm never greeted him in the morning. Galvin explained to him that in Europe it is the custom for the inferior to greet the boss. In Africa, however, the chief must speak to the men first. Auret tried this the very next morning and mirabile dictu saw his workmen transformed before his eyes. His family had been long settled in the country, but it took the Irish priest to point out a local fact of life to him.

This is an example of what besets Africa and other countries confronting the West. They have their own ways. The attempt to treat these countries, from Afghanistan to Zaire, as if they needed only a little ''democratic'' tweaking, and yet more ''aid'', to turn into tropical Swedens, is a mistake. As Fr Galvin observed to him, after a time the Africans would destroy everything European and make it all over in the African way.

Ancient

That might have been a possibility: a return to traditional forms of government that have served Africa, the birthplace of mankind, for a million years. These may be ''new states'', but they are lived in by some of the most ancient peoples in the world.

However, as Auret notes early in the book in relation to the exporting of chrome from the Congo/Zaire, they have resources coveted by the ''developed world''. Despite the turmoil and the genocide, the diamonds, the gold, the copper and all the other resources continue to reach the USA, Europe and now China. Aid money is all too often swallowed up by those in control before it gets to the people.

What Africa may need is a return to its own traditions, to turn away from the West and China (fast becoming a new ''colonial'' power''). To turn away too from ''development'', which too often only serves to benefit others to the detriment of the Africans: air-freighted flowers for Europe rather than food for their famished kin. Africa's first task is not to ''develop'', but to go back to feeding and running itself.

But as the ludicrous opulence of Mugabe's life style is often seen by other African leaders as an ideal this will not happen. Africa is betrayed and raped again and again by its own leaders' lust for wealth and power. The outlook for Zimbabwe is grim: further turmoil can only follow soon.

(Copies of From Liberator to Dictator are available nation wide through Waterstone's and Hodges, Figgis bookshops)