There have been uniformly respectful official tributes from the neighbours of  ousted Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe who has died in Singapore  aged 95.

“South Africans join the people and government of Zimbabwe in mourning the passing of a liberation fighter and champion of Africa’s cause against colonialism,” says South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

“Under President Mugabe’s leadership, Zimbabwe’s sustained and valiant struggle against colonialism  inspired our own struggle against apartheid and built in us the hope that one day South Africa too would be free.”

Namibian President Hage Geingob says: “ Comrade Mugabe was an outstanding revolutionary, a tenacious freedom fighter and a dedicated Pan Africanist.

“He made enormous sacrifices in the struggle against injustice and the liberation of Southern Africa from racial subjugation and colonial oppression.

“As Namibians we owe President Mugabe  deep sense of gratitude for his immense and selfless contribution to the liberation of our country. ”     

I first met Mugabe  in 1975 as a United Nations correspondent covering a conference in Maputo supporting the  liberation  movements in Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa.

His passionate call for the people of those countries to avoid the mistakes  that Mozambique had made in driving out white farmers and entrepreneurs made him one of the most impressive liberation leaders I had encountered.

Mugabe  took a tough line at the Lancaster House Conference three years later, repeatedly telling his British hosts that with power awaiting him, he did not need to be negotiating.

To no-one’s great surprise, Mugabe won a landslide victory in Zimbabwe’s first democratic election.

His first years in that job were a resounding success.

Apartheid ministers I  spoke to in Pretoria in  the  mid eighties said if Mugabe was the face of majority rule in the region, they could deal with it.

But then came the massacre of thousands of Joshua Nkomo’s supporters in Matabeleland backed by North Korean special forces.

When he lost a constitutional referendum and was  in danger of losing an election to the Movement For Democratic Change, Mugabe attempted to regain support by offering Zimbabweans land.

This he seized from whites farmers. He intimidated and even killed those resisting, driving at least 100 black workers off the land with every white farmer he dispossessed.

The policy lost him British government support and drove Zimbabwe into agricultural collapse and a downward economic spiral from which it has yet to emerge.

At one point inflation was 200 000 000 percent as the region’s bread basket, that once exported food to its neighbours, became the basket case dependent on emergency food aid.

Former anti-apartheid activist and British Foreign Office Minister Lord Peter Hain calls Mugabe a classical case of a liberation leader who betrayed the very values for which he was imprisoned and tortured.

“History will judge Robert Mugabe very harshly,” says Lord Hain.

“We were delighted when he came to power ending the white racist rebel government of Ian Smith. He talked of reconciliation and the values we had all be fighting for,” he says.

“Sadly he deteriorated into leading a corrupt regime that flouted human rights and the rule of law.”

Lord Hain advocated slapping sanctions on Mugabe’s Zanu PF government – which are still in placef- or stealing elections and violating human rights.  

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He calls the ousted Zimbabwe president a classical example of  a liberator who betrayed the values of the struggle he championed.

Lord Hain says he does not feel grief about Robert Mugabe’s death in Singapore at the age of 95.

“I can’t say that I’m sorry because he betrayed every one of those values of the freedom struggle of democracy, human rights and social justice and came to preside over a corrupt regime,” he said.

He recalls how during meeting in London in 1999, Mugabe patted him on the knee and called him “one of us” for his anti-apartheid activism.

The following day he viscously attacked then then British Minister blaming him for a gay rights activist making a citizen’s arrest on Mugabe for his notorious homophobia.

Lord Hain went on to advocate sanctions against Mugabe for his human rights abuses.

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The election currently underway in Malawi perfectly illustrates the generational battle in African politics.

Peter Mutharika, vying for a second and final term as President, has a record of achievement to show voters.

He’s brought down inflation this past five years from 14% to 9%.

He is promising the people of one Africa’s poorest countries that Malawi is going  the way of Singapore or Malaysia.

This is somewhat hyperbolic given that more than half the nearly 19-million Malawians live under the poverty line.

Food shortages dog daily life and the 11% of the population with electricity suffer frequent power outages.

Mutharika’s image has been further dented by his having to return a $200 000 campaign donation from a businessman implicated in a $3-million scam involving the contract for supplying food to the police force.

There are seven faces on the presidential ballot paper competing for the votes of seven million electors.

Mutharika’s main rival is his former hand-picked  vice president Saulos Chilima who broke with him last year when it became clear he was running for a second term.

The incumbent, who is a former law professor, is 78 years old.

His sister-in-law Callista, widow of former President Bingu Wa Mutharika, is among those who have advised him that he has passed his sell-by date.

This is a telling argument with more than half of the electorate younger than 35 years.

Former telecoms executive Chilima is 46.

The third frontrunner is former Lazarus Chakwera who ran second to Mutharika in 2014.

He has revived Hastings Banda’s Malawi Congress  Party  and secured the endorsement of former President Joyce Banda. Chakwera is 64.

Age has been a determining factor in a number of recent African political contests.

In South Africa, Julius Malema and Mmusi Maimane, both 38, made much of the fact they were running against 66-year-old Cyril Ramaphosa.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, 74, is going to extraordinary and unconstitutional lengths  to ward off the challenge of Pop-singer-turned MP Bobi Wine, who is 37.

Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa, 76, had his work cut keeping 41-year-old Nelson Chamisa at bay.

Two African presidents have fallen to popular protest this year.

In Sudan, Omar Al Bashir is 75.

Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika is 82. 

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The action echoes that of Vietnam, South Korea and Singapore.

They’ve joined the list of countries that have barred the plane, waring for experts to examine the sound and data boxes from the Ethiopian Airways flight that crashed near Addis Ababa last Sunday and  see whether it is unsafe or just unlucky.

ends intro

Australia is not among the countries already using the 300 Boeing 737 Max.

With 5 000 on order, the plane’s become the biggest seller in aviation history.

The United States Federal Aviation Authority insists it is airworthy, despite the two crashes that cost 346 lives in the past five months.

A growing list of countries is simply not prepared to chance it.

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There’s a message for flat-broke South African Airways: hang in there!

It runs in parallel with Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan’s warning that the airline must clean out corruption if it hopes to survive.

And it supersedes the call by Finance Minister Tito Mboweni that that company, which has not made a profit since 2011, must go to the wall.

The latter is perfectly right in saying no bank or enterprise would get involved with SAA in its current financial state.

But Mboweni’s been repudiated by President Cyril Ramaphosa because, he says, closing the airline would necessitate immediate repayment of its R22 billion debt. This would enormously damage the fiscus.

There’s speculation that Ramaphosa’s remarks have turned his new finance minister into a lame duck: a political has-been who is allowed to say what he wants because he  is only serving his time until after next year’s election.

In fact, Mboweni might have been directed to throw a stone into the bush to see what reaction he could provoke from SAA staff and trade unions who have a veritable bottle of bitter pills to swallow if survival is the option.

These range from exposing the corruption within their ranks to accepting marginal salary increases at best.

My introductory message is based on African aviation predictions.

If SAA can survive it can pick itself up on the approaching boom in African air travel.

IATA figures show the increase in air traffic between sub-Saharan Africa and China will run at 11% over the next decade which will place it among the fastest growing routes on the planet.

Projected traffic between South Africa and China is pretty much in line with this.

China is projected to buy 7690 new aircraft by 2037 with a staggering price tag of $1,2 trillion.

This makes the contest between Airbus and Boeing  for sales to China the most interesting aviation battleground.

US President Donald Trump’s trade war with China is doing Boeing no favours  in this dogfight.

Just this week, Airbus executives are in Beijing talking about the sale of 180 Airbus A320s at price of $18 billion dollars.

If it does get to contest the skies tomorrow, SAA will face new competition.

As US voters cast their ballots in the midterm elections, the Airbus 330-800, which will be the warhorse in that battle, made its maiden flight in Toulouse.

The wide-bodied liner with a capacity of 257 passengers is powered by Rolls Royce Trent 7000 engines that are quieter than their predecessors and 14% more fuel efficient.

Air Mauritius, Air Senegal and RwandAir have firmed up their orders for the new aircraft.

The nascent Uganda Air has signed a memorandum of understanding for two A330-800s.

Nigeria that has taken an on-off approach to reinstating a national carrier could add to the competition

However, there is plenty for everyone. 

The dearth of road and rail infrastructure makes air travel between African countries –  and particularly the  movement of perishable goods – indispensable as their population grows to 1,4 billion.

Ethiopian Airlines, which has a fleet more than twice the size of SAA’s, will indubitably remain the continental giant and an example the South African carrier should emulate wherever possible.

It’s major competitors are not SAA, Kenya Airways and Egyptair but Qatar, Emirates and Turkish Airlines.

Its growth has come from a protected regulatory  framework, the cross subsidization of airport revenue and concessionary fees at Ethiopian airports.

Competitive pricing has enabled it to make the frankly substandard Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa a hub competing with Singapore, Istanbul and Dubai.

The bulk of Ethiopia Airlines’ planes are wide-bodied liners from the Boeing and Airbus range. 

The fleet is constantly updated with planes being  exchanged every six-and-a-half years.

Somehow SAA has to change its message from “ah, if only”  to becoming the Little Red Engine saying: “I think I can.”

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There were many of us who did not believe – whatever the reliable wire services were reporting – that Robert Mugabe was going to step down as Zimbabwe’s President yesterday.

Interestingly, we were invariably those who have met and spoken to the 93 year old.

Robert Mugabe is probably the most stubborn man I have met.

In the days when his political star shone bright, he could afford to be.

In our first interview in Maputo 41 years ago, he said his  Mozambique host Samora Machel has taught him the invaluable lesson to retain white farmers and entrepreneurs.

In power 15 years later, to ward off a threat from a burgeoning opposition he launched land grab that turned his country from the regional bread basked into the continental basket case.

At the Lancaster Conference in London in 1979 he had his host Lord Carrington, the British Foreign Secretary over a barrel.

Every time deadlock loomed, Mugabe would pack his papers and lead his team out.

He knew there could be no settlement without him.

On the few occasions I spoke to him in Harare, Mugabe knew he had the whip hand with overwhelming support from the military and the ruling party.

This enabled him to insult and belittle British premier Tony Blair, Botswana’s President Ian Khama and anyone else he perceived as a dangerous opponent.

Many years have passed and the glaring defiance has evidently dimmed.

He has repeatedly overplayed his hand. And, more fatally, he has allowed his South African-born typist wife to play hers.

Approaching his 94th birthday, the longest serving head-of-government on the planet has obviously not grasped the reality that his actions, and those of his wife, have stripped him of friends, allies and supporters.

Mugabe will be impeached this week.

The ruling ZANU PF will make sure of it.

So will Zimbabwe’s military, desperate to avoid having the African Union officially characterise its actions as a coup which would automatically red-card the country.

What Mugabe will not be be able to do is effect a dignified exit.

And he will find it infinitely more difficult to achieve the shelter he is seeking in Singapore for himself and his wife, who has been expelled from Zanu PF.

Some find this sad.

The majority, however, are saying what Zimbabweans finally dare to go to the streets to declare: good riddance.

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