“Greetings in the name of freedom,” proclaimed the newly minted prime minster, Robert Mugabe, during Zimbabwe’s independence celebration in 1980. His words marked one of the most brilliant transitions of power in recent history, as the last conflict of the post-colonial retreat faded into history. The white rulers of the renegade Rhodesia had ceded power to African nationalists, after assurances by British mediators that free markets and democracy would be preserved.
So in the fashion of a true capitalistic democracy, it is said that the first words uttered in the new Zimbabwe were, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Bob Marley and the Wailers.” The reggae band, which scribed the nationalist coda “Zimbabwe,” had traveled to the capital of Salisbury to help usher in a new epoch of African optimism. But amidst all the music and celebrations came a sobering moment, in the form of prudent advice from a most unlikely source: President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. Pulling Mugabe aside shortly after the independence celebrations, Nyerere delivered an ominous warning and powerful plea for good governance.
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