Sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of why we study at university, but in Robert Mugabe – President of Zimbabwe, Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath and holder of eight degrees (one from the University of Fort Hare, two from the University of South Africa, three from the University of London, and a “degree in violence” from the School of Hard Knocks) – we can learn to appreciate the value of higher education.
Mugabe’s relationship to academic rigour is similar to Hitler’s with sartorial elegance. Namely, not very much, but not very much in a very violent way.
Why are we even comparing Robert “Black Hitler” Mugabe with some limp-wristed Victorian schmoozer? Sure, Rhodes might have been a white supremacist before it was truly in vogue, but that’s where his similarities with Hitler end. Rhodes is forward-thinking, though, I’ll give him that. Even in death, he managed to be reincarnated as L. Ron Hubbard, yet another great thinker who came before his time.
Rhodes ideas for global domination of the Anglo-Saxon race might be ambitious, but he didn’t get very far with it, did he? Mugabe, far from being an ivory tower academic, spent ten years hardening up in prison, running the ZANU party while still inside prison, then waging a bloody guerilla war when he got out. He didn’t just fight (which is more than we can say for Rhodes), he won, took over the country, and held it for nearly three decades while running it into the ground.
Let history be the judge. Oh wait – it has, and it’s called a KO for Mugabe. Not only was Rhodes colonial legacy overthrown, but it’s been replaced with a system of oppression that’s fit for the 21st century. It proves that, for sheer bloody violence, modern indigenous African tyranny can kick the crap out of pansy-assed Victorian colonialism any day of the week. Go Mugabe!