All we hear about Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe in U.S. mainstream media is how he has mismanaged the country, fixed elections, and expropriated white farmers’ land. Interviewed by al-Jazeera, journalist Heidi Holland offers a different perspective:
I think he is a disillusioned man today. He is a man who came to office with a very utopian view of life and over the years he has had to accept that things have not worked out the way he intended.
Unfortunately, because he is a very intellectual man and not really emotionally grounded at all, his response to disillusionment, rejection and humiliation is anger.
Anger turns to revenge. I think that came through in his answers.
I think I got quite a good insight into quite a bitter man, a man with a lot of grievances; some of which I have to say are founded against the West, and Britain in particular.
Holland sees Mugabe as emotionally under-developed, brutal, and self-righteous, but not solely to blame for Zimbabwe’s problems.