Like King Lear or Frankenstein, Robert Mugabe victory in a tragedy at
New York.
He
is the oldest African head of state (89), after the departure of Abdoulaye Wade
of Senegal in 2012. He won every presidential election in Zimbabwe, despite the
economic sanctions that have rolled his country. We say sick, but never enough
to die and relinquish power. Neighboring younger heads of states mysteriously
fall like flies, when they reach or cross the sixties.
His
predecessor Sodindo Canaan Banana, a Methodist pastor became civilized manners
when he died, the laughingstock of the Conservative Africa. Accused of sodomy
in his bodyguards by his Zimbabwean Justice, under the orders of Mugabe who
hates homosexuals. The unfortunate pastor was sentenced to ten years in prison,
he was released through the intervention of Nelson Mandela after eight months
in prison. His wife and children flee him as a disease and get political asylum
in Britain. At 67, he died of grief in Harare on 10 November 2003.
His longevity is inversely proportional to that of his neighbors!
Samora
Machel, President of Mozambique, 53, enters the top of at Mbala in Zambia, on
October 19, 1986, his plane, a Tupolev 134- TU-b, flies over Zimbabwe crashing
Mbuzini in South Africa. The summit which he has just witnessed reunite
Mozambique, Zambia, Angola and Zaire. Samora Machel had accused Mobutu Sese
Seko of Zaire and Hastings Kamuzu Banda of Malawi to support his armed opposition
of RENAMO. Two great wizards who hardly support the boldness of the young
Marxist of Mozambique. Who was able to place the false radio beacon mobile
(developed by the Israeli MOSSAD) used to divert the aircraft in its path as he
headed right to Maputo? To hide his crime, Mobutu asked his ambassador of
Zaire, the former footballer Emmanuel Batala Tokwaulu to return to Maputo
aboard the Tupolev of Samora. He will be part of 24 victims of the crash. While
Hastings Kamuzu Banda was stayed warm in his palace plan probably hit with Hans
Louw of the South African Special Forces.
Laurent
Désiré Kabila, president of R.D. Congo, whose bodyguard was provided by
Zimbabwean soldiers and though he was his great friend was murdered on 16
January 2001, in his office in Kinshasa in 62 years. And for the record,
Zimbabweans have carried his body bullet riddled in Harare, before his funeral
in Kinshasa. Mugabe himself has he done an autopsy to the African (Witchcraft)
that his ghost can not come back to haunt his adopted son putative and
successor Joseph Kabila? In return, he dedicates to him a partner admiration!
More
prosaically, the explanation given by the radio sidewalk Kinshasa: he had his
fingerprints still hot to open his chest full of diamonds to the Reserve Bank
of Zimbabwe.
His
predecessor Mobutu Sese Seko, he overthrew on the 17 May 1997, died at age 67
in Rabat of prostate cancer on September 7, 1997. He came to reign supreme on
Zaire for 32 years. Exhausted by absolute power, sick, abandoned by all his
favorite!
Unexplained heart
attacks and waterfall!
Levy Patrick Mwanawasa, President of
Zambia was felled by a stroke in the summit of the African Union in Cham el
Sheick (Egypt) on June 29, 2008. Admitted to hospital of Clamart in Paris on
July 1, 2008, he died on 19 August 2008. He was about to celebrate his sixtieth
birthday. In his capacity as Chairman of the African Union , he had declared he
would take care of Zimbabwe!
Three
years after his death, his predecessor Frederick Jacob Titus Chiluba who led
Zambia from 1991 to 2002, was also struck at age 68 of a heart attack on June
18, 2011, after being humiliated by a trial for misappropriation of public
funds and corruption.
Bingu
wa Mutharika, President of Malawi died of heart attack on 5 April 2012. He had
crossed the sixties before access to power on May 20, 2004. Coincidentally, he
had just replaced Mo'ammar Gaddafi as chairman of the African Union (which he
had already assumed the General Secretariat) and the issue of elections in
Zimbabwe was still valid. In addition, he had lost the mother of his four
children, Ethel Zvauya Mutharika of Zimbabwean origin and is about to marry his
former Tourism Minister: Calliste Chapola-Chimongo (his junior by 28 years).
Grand Master of the Central and Southern Africa , year after year, he
reigns over Zimbabwe for 33 years.
"Breakfast
with Mugabe", the piece of British playwright Fraser Grace is inspired by
an article in the "Times of London" after the disputed presidential
election of 2002. It was played in London premieres in London in 2005. It triumphed
in November 2013 at Pershing Square Signature Center in New York. Mugabe of
Fraser Grace is a depressed patient, secluded in his palace, haunted by the
spirit of a dead comrade. He brought an English psychiatrist for treatment.
But
he could, given that Mugabe is haunted by an evil spirit the
"Ngoyi" from the Shona mythology.
"Whenever
Mugabe was in the papers, he was described as a monster. And my starting point
was that we are not born monster, one becomes” says Fraser Grace :“There is
no doubt that some features of behavior are monstrous But it is interesting to
see that he had many experiences that Nelson Mandela has been: struggle for
black emancipation, prison ... They both suffered terrible humiliation and
oppression under the settlement".
The frame and the drama they meet reality!
In
the play sessions with the psychiatrist invoke the demons that torment probably
Mugabe : his betrayal of his first wife, abandoned by his father in his
childhood, the death of his own son during his detention by the colonial regime
, and refusal of Ian Smith , leader of the white minority at the time, to leave
to attend the funeral .
Breakfast with Mugabe has only four characters: Mugabe and his wife Grace (
58), Gabriel , his bodyguard and Andrew Peric , the psychiatrist employed by
the White Zimbabwean president. Peric , played by actor Ezra Barnes , is the
first meeting of Grace Mugabe, wife of the secretary became president after the
death of the previous one. Known for his taste for luxury and his escapades
that have contributed to the presidential couple banished from the Western
community , it is called by its detractors "First shopper " ("
first purchaser " ) or " Gucci Grace" , or simply "
Disgrace " .
Mrs. Grace Mugabe aka " First shopper " or " Disgrace "
Played by Rosalyn Coleman, alternately friendly and menacing , the first lady
causes Peric while waiting Mugabe. He assures her that his intentions are
"pure" . Then she replied : " And what do you think there are so
Zimbabwe is pure ? " , Adding : " Do what you're told , or you will
not treat long your patient. "
Played
by Michael Rogers, Mugabe has certainly sought help from Peric, but it supports
it difficult to be vulnerable to a white man. Their relationship is so
electric. While the psychiatrist asks Mugabe on the ghost that continues, he is
engaged in his usual aggressiveness, attacking Peric, his White ancestors who
had stolen their land from the Africans and their voices.
Peric,
who has a good knowledge of the Shona culture, which is described by Ezra
Barnes as "postracial", retorted that, as many of these Whites whose
European ancestors came to settle on the mainland, he considers himself
African. Unfortunately for the psychiatrist and his family his meeting with Mugabe will have
terrible consequences.
Robert and I have stayed with Ceausescu!
Praised
by critics for its Shakespearean dimension , the piece explores the tragic
nature of power : the loss can sometimes be synonymous with degradation. "I'm
afraid of the future", said the first lady.
"Robert
and I stayed with these people Romania, Ceausescu ... Look what happened to
them", she said referring to the infamous dictator, executed in 1990 with his
wife, whose arrogance was not without evoke that of Grace.
The
piece was produced for the first time in a London theater in 2005. It now plays
in New York until October 6, 2013, ten years after its conception. "In
many ways things have gone down in Zimbabwe", said Fraser Grace .
“Fuck you hang!”
Heidi
Holland, the South African journalist, who published in 1975 a book entitled "Dinner
with Mugabe"* had hanged herself in his garden in Melville (Johannesburg) , at 64 11
August 2012 without really knowing why. Ms. Fraser Grace Will it suffer the
same fate ?
Mugabe said: "I do not make enemies. Others make me enemy of theirs",
and after his victory in the presidential elections on 31 July 2013, who swore
he wants to govern Zimbabwe to 100 years, has launched his opponents who challenged
his victory in court: "Fuck you hang! ". An insult or a curse, we
will never know?
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*HOLLAND H.,, Dinner With Mugabe : The Untold Story of a Freedom Fighter Who
Became a Tyrant , Nathalie Ross, 2008.