Zimbabwe-Dance Hall Dreams

ZIMBABWE

Dancehall Dreams

Winky D is a hero among some in Zimbabwe.

The popular singer performs Zimdancehall music, a reggae-descended genre that gives voice to the “veiled discontent” and “disillusionment” that’s widespread in the southern African country, wrote the New York Times.

The target of Winky D and others’ ire, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, has allegedly organized mobs to disrupt the singer’s appearances.

Mnangagwa took over Zimbabwe’s government in November 2017 after his former ally, then-President Robert Mugabe, was ousted in a coup.

Mugabe had held power since he helped lead the fight for the country’s independence from Britain in the early 1980s. His economic policies, including redistributing land from white citizens who had enjoyed privileges under British rule, destroyed the country’s economy, argued the Telegraph.

Many Zimbabweans hoped Mnangagwa would change things. Instead, he has failed to enact meaningful reforms fast enough. Inflation in June, the most recent figure available, was 175 percent, National Public Radio reported. A drought has led a third of the country’s 16 million citizens to require food aid. Corruption is the norm.

Mugabe died earlier this month at the age of 95. His passing released a flurry of introspection among Zimbabweans and observers witnessing his legacy of wreckage.

“I remember Mugabe [as] an angry man who channeled his rage against colonial rule to become one of Africa’s most influential and longest-lasting leaders,” recalled Associated Press reporter Andrew Meldrum.

Mnangagwa was no less angry or violent in his brutal suppression of dissent as a military leader and boss of his and Mugabe’s political party, the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front, or ZANU–PF, left-wing news website CounterPunch added.

Mnangagwa has tried to distance himself from Mugabe’s economic legacy, noted Reuters. But Zimbabweans can’t help but make the link as they remember the former president.

“Mugabe’s death has come at a time when we have moved on without him,” said Richmond Dhamara, a street fruit vendor in Harare, told the New York Times. “I don’t think he will be missed that much, because he is the same (as those) who succeeded him – cruel.”

In the wake of Mugabe’s passing, it’s almost sad to see the upswelling of positive memories about his first wife, Sally, whom he married in 1961 and who died in 1992. In the BBC, for instance, journalist Elizabeth Ohene portrayed Sally Mugabe as a anti-imperialist freedom fighter. Others viewed her as a feminist.

Few have fond memories of Mugabe, though, anymore. And most believe that he kept the dream of a prosperous, stable Zimbabwe from being realized. As will his successor.