A Fanonian Reading of Robert Gabriel Mugabe as Colonial Subject

Abstract

Robert Mugabe is a difficult subject to define and understand. This is largely because Mugabe is a colonial subject that played a pivotal part in the decolonization struggles but continues to manifest multiple contradictions as a postcolonial actor. Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, Mugabe’s signification became locked in the form of two registers—of liberal and nationalist signification. The liberal signification holds that Mugabe is a villain, despot, tyrant, human rights violator, and the figure of evil. This liberal signification with its hegemonic form and content creates a liberal consensus where the world without Mugabe will be a just world. This even goes to the extent of having a one-dimensional narrative of who Mugabe is, and this is the signification that has even assumed the level of common sense. Mugabe is all things gone badly—a leader who degenerated from a liberation hero to the typical postcolonial tyrant—thus, the cause of Zimbabwean crisis.