Emperors celebrate in birthday suits

Two presidents. Two birthdays. One month. One region. This is the story of presidents Robert Gabriel Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Brightson Webster Ryson Thom, otherwise known as Bingu wa Mutharika (Malawi). Mugabe was born February 21 1924. Mutharika 10 years and three days later.

Last week, the pair celebrated their birthdays, Mugabe his 87th and Mutharika his 77th. We were treated to an interesting spectacle! You could have sworn the two leaders had exchanged notes. Actually, that seems to be the case.
Some background.

Mutharika owns a farm in a small Zimbabwean town called Kadoma. The farm is called Bineth Farm — a combination of his name Bingu and that of his late wife’s, Ethel. She was half-Zimbabwean. This farm has remained untouched by the land invasions of recent years. Reports, however, continue to emerge every day of poor working and living conditions, low production. That is to be expected from leaders of Mugabe and Mutharika’s calibre, leaders who preach water while drinking wine.

When Mutharika dumped the party that had secured his presidential victory in 2004, he quickly looked south of the Zambezi for regional support and none other than President Mugabe stood by him, albeit from a distance. He faced a backlash from the United Democratic Front (UDF) whose leader and former Malawian president, Bakili Muluzi, had tirelessly sold the largely unknown and uncharismatic Mutharika to an unconvinced electorate.

During his first term in office, Mutharika went on to be frustrated by the opposition, including the UDF, which had been reduced to opposition-party status and even faced possible impeachment. It was his anti-corruption crusade and emphasis on good governance — or so Malawians thought — which bought him much-needed public sympathy.

At some point he withdrew — due to public pressure — the proposed purchase of a Mercedes-Benz Maybach 62 and two Maybach 57s, one of those believed to be for his wife. This was a welcome departure from the selfish indulgencies of Muluzi, who at the end of his tenure, had a personal fleet of vehicles, which included a Bentley Continental, S500 Mercedes-Benz and a Range Rover. So in the eyes of the people, Mutharika was good and the opposition parties frustrating him were bad, counter-productive. It was that simple.

It was during those years of torment that Mutharika got closer to Mugabe, even naming a road that takes you past his farm in Malawi after Robert Mugabe — the Robert Mugabe Highway. When he eventually won, overwhelmingly, in the 2009 general elections, it was Mugabe who was one of the first to jet into Blantyre — the commercial capital — for his inauguration, cementing the ties of a brotherly relationship.

Interestingly, during Mutharika’s second term, anti-corruption fights have gone north while emphasis on good governance has gone south, much like how in the late 1990s, Zimbabwe’s democratic culture was forced east as the rule of law rode to the wild, wild west.

It is now an open secret that he is grooming his younger brother, Peter, to take over the reins when his two terms expire in 2014. In the process Vice President Joyce Banda — the first female VP in Malawi — has had her office reduced to a ceremonial one.

In fact, Mutharika has stripped Banda of much of her roles and assigned them to his new wife, Callista, a former cabinet minister. To buttress this point, Mutharika removed Banda — an African Union appointed national coordinator for safe motherhood and early childhood development — from this position and simply replaced her with his wife, who he offered a contract through the Malawi government. Needless to say, she is now drawing a salary and other perks (allowances etc) for doing charity work! In addition to all this, her name appears on the Malawi cabinet list although the presidency insists she is not a member of her husband’s kitchen cabinet. But to be fair to Mugabe, there are some stark differences with his Malawian comrade. He insists on being called “His Excellency the State President, Ngwazi Professor Bingu wa Mutharika”. Ngwazi means conqueror and it was a title used by Malawi’s founding president, Ngwazi Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda who ruled the country for 30 years with a heavy hand. The professor title comes from an honorary professorship he was awarded by a Chinese university. Also, he has not made any secret of his admiration for Banda, an erstwhile dictator. In sharp contrast, Mugabe is a man who boasts of 12 or so degrees, most of those earned. Yet he does not seem to fancy titles: His Excellency, Comrade Robert Mugabe seems just fine.

Regardless, the two presidents have built patronage networks in their countries that have resulted in some of their loyalists doing some crazy things. A certain Zimbabwean cabinet minister is known for always signing off his letters to Mugabe by saying, “Your Ever-Obedient Son”. In Malawi, a senior member of Mutharika’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party came out in defence of ministers and other politicians who were said to be kneeling before the president when addressing him. He said he could not see what wrong lay in that.

Last week, government ministries, parastatals and several companies in both countries were tripping over themselves to place adverts in newspapers and state-run broadcast media praising their leaders and thanking them for such visionary leadership and wishing them many more years to come. Failure to be seen as publicly endorsing and joining your dear leader in celebrating their birthday could be — actually is — read as some kind of insubordination, disrespect for the leader.

But truly speaking these emperors have no clothes and accompanying shame. They are quashing dissent, arresting human-rights defenders, harassing journalists, undemocratically strengthening their grip on power and engaging in corrupt activities at the expense of their countries. Just recently at the African Union summit, Mutharika insisted on sleeping in a US $9 000/night suite in Addis Ababa, declining the US $1 500/night suite he had been offered by the AU. Needless to say, the Malawi Embassy in Ethiopia was asked to settle the bill at the expense of the taxpayer. What an insult to the people of this impoverished nation!

Mugabe is a leader who, among his peers in the region, is still viewed as a role model, hero worth emulating even. But “junior” leaders like Mutharika are taking dangerous cues from him and this will, without doubt, frustrate the on-going democratisation programme in SADC. The self-glorification and self-immortalisation witnessed both in Harare and Lilongwe last week has disturbing undertones of a leadership grossly out of touch with its people and one that is tragically believing its own lies.

More critically, however, these lavish celebrations speak to a subtle but unashamed display of obscene wealth afforded by the state and obtained via questionable means against a backdrop of shattered dreams, broken promises and abject poverty. This can’t be worth celebrating.