News that South Africa's main television station will be airing a rare interview with Zimbabwe's first family has strengthened belief that there are attempts to spruce up Mugabe's image.
The interview, which will be broadcast this Sunday, was granted to South Africa Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) talk show host Dali Tambo who joined Mugabe for a lavish dinner at State House last year.
According to The Sunday Independent, the interview included footage of the Mugabe family's take on various issues, including Grace gloating about assaulting a journalist, the President's criticism of Nelson Mandela, and his shenanigans with Grace while his first wife Sally was lying on her deathbed.
Analysts say that while it is obvious that the interview is part of a choreographed campaign by Mugabe's team to sanitise his image, it nevertheless exposes the man for what he really is: a dictator with serious moral limitations.
Zimbabweans will recall a similarly ‘rare' opportunity recently granted to Ghanaian filmmaker Roy Agyemang, who has since embarked on a global campaign to promote Mugabe as an African statesman vilified by the West.
Zimbabweans will also be disheartened to learn from the Tambo interview that the 89-year-old Mugabe has no plans of retiring anytime soon.
"My people still need me, and when people need you to lead them it is not time, sir - it doesn't matter how old you are - to say goodbye," Mugabe said while accusing global icon Mandela of being ‘too good' and ‘too saintly' with the whites.
Since the story of the forthcoming broadcast emerged, Zimbabweans have taken to social media platforms to air their views on Mugabe's comments. Writing on Facebook, political analyst Joram Nyathi said that by criticising Mandela, Mugabe is ignoring the predicament Mandela faced and the way he used his charisma to manage the handover of power from Boers to blacks.
"Whether he could have done much after that is almost impossible to tell, hence the decision to step down or stay in power is immaterial. In fact it could very well be interpreted as trying to avoid a direct confrontation with the brutal reality of African poverty and the refusal by the Boers to cede even an inch of the soil.
"I don't think Mandela deliberately sought to be a good boy to the whites. The odds were overwhelmingly against his sense of justice. He gave up and hoped the younger people would take up the fight for blacks in a more vigorous way."
In another post, Brighton Musonza said: "What Mugabe is not able to say is, Mandela's name will unite South Africans for centuries to come when he is long gone, whereas, on the day he (Mugabe) dies, there will be street parties across Zimbabwe."
Commenting on the forthcoming SABC broadcast, senior journalist Dumisani Muleya commended Tambo for managing to extract information that ordinarily, the eccentric Zimbabwean leader would not give to local journalists.
Muleya said both Tambo and Agyemang's work are designed to give a context to Mugabe's actions over the years "as if to say after all the fierce criticisms that Mugabe has faced, the historical context salvages parts of his reputation and image.
"Both gentlemen are trying to project Mugabe's historical transformation in reverse order: from villain to hero. In fact, it would seem that the two are saying Mugabe was never a villain but was misunderstood. Both interview and documentary provide useful information, but they are not critical at all. They are clear attempts to whitewash Mugabe's battered image.
"But despite the attempts by Tambo and Agyemang to paint this picture of Mugabe as a humane individual, Zimbabweans will not buy their conclusions because they know the impact and consequences of Mugabe's three decades of misrule," Muleya said.
Muleya said that if the forthcoming elections were to be free and fair, the views held by Zimbabweans on Mugabe's legacy and leadership wouldn't change: "They would, through the ballot, reject his misrule and mismanagement as they have done over the past decade."
Muleya added that Mugabe's admission that he had an affair, while first wife Sally, who died in 1992 was still alive, betrays a yawning gap in the president's morality despite the loving, upright family picture Dali's interview tried to capture.
This article first appeared on the SW Radio Africa website www.swradioafrica.com
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