Zimbabwe: Mugabe Falls From Grace
WATCHING President Robert Mugabe being booed and heckled by opposition MPs in parliament during a state of the nation address on Tuesday was a sad spectacle and pitiful sight. It just showed how he has now fallen from grace to grass.
At the height of his power and popularity in 1980, Mugabe was liked - and hated too - by many who saw him as a liberation struggle hero and a progressive leader who could change his people's lives and the continent for the better.
Many believed -- on the basis of his rhetoric and promises rather than substance or evidence -- he wanted social equality through promoting equal opportunity.
Mugabe initially seemed credible as he appeared to support economic and social interventions to promote social justice within a socialist framework, and a policy regime involving welfare state aspects, hence regulation of the economy supposedly in the general interest and redistribution of income and wealth.
