Race plays an important role in politics in most multicultural, multiethnic, and multiracial societies. Politicians tend to use race when everything else has failed to try to hold on to power and to divide the electorate by appealing to their fears and prejudice. Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe is one such politician who has shamelessly divided its country according to race to retain and although he has been able to retain power, its tactics have failed.
Zimbabwe is one of the hew nations of Africa, which as South Africa has a sizeable white minority who holds a lot of the land and has economic power. Robert Mugabe came to power as a national hero after gaining independence from the British and one of his promises was to make sure that land was divided more evenly.
- However, Mugabe never did anything about the distribution of power and started to use racial politics in recent years when it became clear that his status as national hero was no longer enough to get him reelected.
- He decided that to remain in power, he needed to divide its compatriots according to their race and to act as though White Zimbabweans had no right to their land and to the farms that they owned.
- He instituted land reforms, which led to the seizure of lands and farms owned by White Zimbabweans who had to flee and to leave everything behind. It also lead to erosion of the farming sector in Zimbabwe who could no longer produce enough food to feed its own populations because by getting rid of white farmers, they had lost the people who knew how to farm the land. This resulted in the huge migrations of Zimbabweans from their country who fled to South Africa and other neigboring countries.
- Today, the government of Mugabe has realized that it went too far and is trying to attract the same people they chase away by offering them a way to get their land back.
- Unfortunately, I believe that the national reconciliation will only happen with the departure or more likely the death of Robert Mugabe.
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