Mugabe’s dictatorship in Zimbabwe has
survived only because of the vicious suppression of all internal dissent. At the
same time, the dictator fought in external wars, regardless of the domestic
costs. This revealing book tracks the rise of Mugabe and decodes his psychology
in the context of Zimbabwe’s military history. His
leadership of a guerrilla army against white rule explains how Mugabe continued
to rule Zimbabwe as though he were still
running an insurgency. Mugabe used military power – the armed forces, militias,
police and the dreaded Central Intelligence Organisation – to enforce his will
against a series of perceived enemies. Along with inflicting massacres in
Matabeleland in the early 1980s, Mugabe’s forces also fought a covert war
against apartheid South
Africa. A large army was sent to intervene in
the civil war in Mozambique. After 1998 Zimbabwean
troops engaged in the massive conflict in the Congo, dubbed Africa’s First World War.
Domestically, Mugabe crushed all his alleged opponents from the
Ndebele to white farmers, and then the media, judiciary, civic groups, churches,
unions and homosexuals. The book recounts South African attempts to keep the
current government of national unity alive, despite the growing oppression. It
also considers how Zimbabwe can be saved from its own
self-destruction.
Mugabe’s War Machine is the first full account of one man’s military
ambitions. It contains shocking stories of massacre and murder at home and
powerful accounts of neighbouring wars and international intelligence
intrigues.