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What the Irishman of Kutama taught Mugabe
By Paul Taylor
I WAS surprised to learn, according to a book titled Mugabe by David Smith and Colin Simpson, that when Robert Mugabe was a pupil at Kutama Mission, a foundation of the Society of Jesus, he was the protégé of a white man, an Irish Jesuit called O'Hea, who recognised his special qualities - "an exceptional mind and an exceptional heart" and so "rushed Mugabe ahead, far quicker than almost any other pupil".
From funds at his
disposal, this white man later provided Mugabe with a bursary to pursue his own
training as a teacher.
O'Hea believed children should learn about the wider world as well as
examination syllabuses. He taught Mugabe and other youngsters about political,
social and moral issues. The priest detested the immoral racism of the colonial
state and was not afraid to say so.
He encouraged the reading of newspapers and outside his office each evening
pupils would congregate to listen to the news on his wireless, about the course
of the Second World War and other matters.
He would "explain patiently to (his pupils) what was going on, never leaving
them in any doubt about what he thought of Hitler and Mussolini. The smallest
boy in the group (Mugabe himself) would stand at the back and say little, except
that he didn't like Hitler."
Imagine that! A time when Mugabe did not like Hitler! Corruptio optima
pessimi.
O'Hea should be judged by the life progress of his pupil Mugabe. What a bad
influence the Irishman must have been! He lavished attention on the man who has
reduced Zimbabwe to the status of an unlovable pariah. He taught religion to the
man who has flouted the teachings of the church.
He discussed the politics of freedom and self-determination with the man who
has stolen the sovereignty of the people of Zimbabwe. He condemned racism before
the man who has become the face of racism on the African continent. He showed
generosity and kindness to the man who would respond with hatred sharper than a
serpent's tooth.
We must learn from the tragedy of Mugabe to be suspicious of those who teach
our children. I am not surprised that Brendan Tiernan, the Rector of St
George's, the Jesuit school in Harare, has landed in hot water because of the
comments he made in a school circular - a private communication - which for days
has been featured in the pages of the Herald.
Apparently Tiernan said "even a caveman" would be aware that the presidential
election was not free or fair. Well, the theft of the presidential election is
not exactly a secret in any part of the world.
The head-hunters of Borneo, the pygmies of the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, the hermits of the snowy Himalayas, the rainforest dwellers of the
Amazon, the barbarous sheep farmers of the Australian outback, the football
hooligans of London and yes, most certainly, the fabled cavemen of the Galtee
Mountains of Ireland, have all heard of the shedding of innocent blood for which
Mugabe has been responsible and I am sure too that they have shuddered and
prayed to God at the things they have heard.
But truth is so precious in Zimbabwe today that it must be accompanied by a
bodyguard of lies. Charges have now been laid against Tiernan. In addition,
Father Fidelis Mukonori, provincial of the Jesuits and chairman of the governors
of St George's, has announced that Tiernan will be summoned before a
disciplinary hearing for his comments.
This was to be expected. "Fidelis" after all means "faithful" and Father
Fidelis is a faithful friend to Mugabe. Heart-warmingly, the Catholic Church is
colluding in the suppression of truth for the sake of faithful friendship.
I have never met or communicated with Tiernan. Nor would I wish to. I can
only think the worst of him. Like O'Hea and Donal Lamont, who notoriously called
racism a "pernicious heresy", Tiernan is of Irish blood. The Irish are trouble.
Born with a thirst for, among other things, freedom in their hearts, they won
their independence from the greatest empire the world has known when Mugabe was
not yet a twinkle in his father's eye.
Like O'Hea, Tiernan obviously believes that the education of a child must
take into account that child's right to know about the social and political
issues of our day. Perhaps that was acceptable in Ian Smith's Rhodesia, but in
Mugabe's Zimbabwe it is dangerous to teach our children to think.
Father Fidelis's faithfulness should be rewarded. Tiernan must be punished.
God knows it is not a head teacher's job to communicate with parents, let alone
educate pupils; and God knows, Zimbabwe does not want another misguided Irishman
to foist on a new generation a new Robert Mugabe.
One has been quite enough.
Taylor is a London-based freelance writer.
Bad
leaders, not lack of aid, cause African poverty
By Graham
Boynton
IT is Christian Aid Week and the cry has once again gone out for the West to send more aid to Africa.
On this occasion the
appeal has come from two of our most politically engaged pop stars - Bono and
Bob Geldof - who visited 10 Downing Street on Monday in an attempt to persuade
the Prime Minister to exert his influence at the forthcoming G8 summit in Canada
and increase the West's spending on the beleaguered continent.
Their motives are without doubt noble: they clearly expect an infusion of
Western capital and further debt relief to reduce the suffering and economic
misery in which most of sub-Saharan Africa's citizens find themselves mired.
No doubt they will have received a sympathetic hearing from Tony Blair, for
only last week his Chancellor, Gordon Brown, criticised the world's economic
leaders for wasting aid budgets on countries in the Middle East and North Africa
instead of increasing spending on those with desperately impoverished people in
sub-Saharan Africa.
At what point will it dawn on these well-intentioned aid activists that
throwing vast sums of Western capital at Africa has failed dismally over the
past 40 years and will continue to fail? The cause of poverty in Africa is not
insufficient aid but the way in which almost all of these countries have been
mismanaged since their supposed liberation from the colonial yoke.
An example was reported in last weekend's Daily Telegraph: Sierra Leone
receives £1 billion of international aid annually - more per capita than any
other country in the world - and still it is bogged down by economic, political
and social calamity. Most important, there is no end in sight, however much
money is spent.
Among the most articulate critics of never-ending aid as a solution to Third
World poverty was Lord Bauer, the economics professor who died earlier this
month. He held that it was the character of a country's institutions and the
aptitude of its populace that determined its success. "Where people's abilities,
motivations and political institutions are favourable," he wrote, "material
progress will occur. Where these basic determinants are unfavourable,
development will not occur, even with aid."
In Africa, political mismanagement, corruption and disregard by the
authorities for the bulk of the people have prevailed, indeed flourished, in the
half century that has followed the first withdrawal of colonial rulers. What
African leaders such as Idi Amin, Mobutu Sese Seko, Mengistu Haile Mariam,
Daniel arap Moi and most recently Robert Mugabe have created in their countries
are conditions that are distinctly unfavourable for the development of people's
abilities, motivations and political institutions.
They have ruled their countries like medieval fiefdoms, looting their
faltering economies and through shocking mismanagement creating hardships and
famines for people who do not get the opportunity to vote them out.
And yet the West has continued to pour in the aid, which has almost
unerringly found its way into Swiss bank accounts. Today, there is not a single
example of an African country in recovery from post-colonial chaos. (Some argue
that Mozambique and Angola are on the road to recovery after devastating civil
wars, but that is really stretching the point.)
Blair said after his recent whistle-stop tour of the continent that we can't
afford to walk away from Africa. Equally we cannot afford to continue ignoring
the problem that is central to Africa's collapse: corrupt leadership. There is
no better example during Christian Aid Week than Zimbabwe, a country where all
the basic tenets of Christian decency have been abandoned for the benefit of one
megalomaniac and a handful of cronies.
Zimbabwe has become the recipient of United Nations food aid and, as its
agricultural crisis deepens, so the famine will harden and the need for food aid
will intensify. As was the case with the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s in which
Bob Geldof so famously intervened, the Zimbabwean crisis has been created by a
political leader who had jumped the rails.
For Mengistu (now, strangely enough, residing in Harare) read Robert Mugabe.
The collapse of the country's agriculture can be traced directly to Mugabe's
desperation to hang on to power. A country that once had a strategic grain
reserve of a million tons now finds itself without maize or the foreign currency
to buy it.
While farm invasions by so-called war veterans have gathered momentum in the
post-election period when the world turned its attention to other international
crises, maize supplies are pouring in, but are, according to most observers,
failing to reach ordinary Zimbabweans, who are starving.
According to Paul Themba Nyathi, a leading Zimbabwean opposition
parliamentarian who is visiting London this week, most of the food aid is being
distributed to government officials, "which means it is either being sold for
profit or it is going to Mugabe's supporters. I know that it is not reaching
supporters of the MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) in the rural areas.
"There seems to be confusion [in the West] about what to do about Zimbabwe,"
he says. "The MDC's position is that until there is an agreed upon distribution
network which brings in independent bodies like the Church, food aid should be
withheld. If food aid is being used to legitimise Mugabe's party, it serves no
useful purpose to Zimbabwe."
The fact that Mugabe was able to attend the UN General Assembly Special
Session on Children in New York last week and that his government was recently
elected to the 15-member UN Commission on Human Rights suggests that a deaf ear
will be turned to the pleas of Themba Nyathi.
As long as we continue to bestow legitimacy on the destructive dictators who
have for so long been at the centre of Africa's ruination, and then bail them
out with tranches of aid when their countries collapse, so the downward cycle
will continue. As Lord Bauer said, aid goes no way towards righting past
colonial wrongs. Only the overthrow of the despots will do that. - The
Telegraph.