Opinion - the World Robert Mugabe Left Behind

Being in Harare, Zimbabwe, as the news came through that Robert Mugabe had died, was in many ways a welcome and anti-climactic experience. If that was my personal sense - as a Commonwealth official who supervised the observation of the independence elections from January to March 1980 when he came to power, and who has visited Zimbabwe almost 70 times since - it seemed also to be the mood of the city. Harare remained quiet. The news came at night, too late for the newspapers that had already gone to press. Not everyone has wi-fi access, many of those who do face constant electricity cuts and cannot recharge their cell phones or computers, so the news spread to a large extent by word of mouth. If there was one intangible sense that hung in the air, it was a sense that this was about time. Mugabe had hung around too long. And even though he had been ousted from power in 2017, his shadow had clung to Zimbabwe.