MUGABE'S MODEL: NORTH KOREA'S 'GREAT LEADER'

Visitors to the offices of high-ranking officials in Robert Mugabe's beleaguered government in recent weeks have noticed the same book open for study: Juche ! The Speeches and Writings of Kim Il Sung. "Some may actually believe this stuff but it's more that they want to understand where the President is coming from," one insider told me. For it appears that those who have become anxious about Mugabe's Canute-like attempt to order inflation of 7,000 per cent to be halved and to subordinate the economy in general to his political will, is not just acting wildly. He has a model, North Korea's Great Leader who, though he died in 1994, is still enshrined in that country's constitution as 'President for eternity' so that the current ruler, his son Kim Jong-Il, never actually uses the title of president. Receiving the new North Korean ambassador in May this year Mugabe told him that North Korea had been a guiding light and friend ever since it began to aid his ZANU guerrilla army, Zanla, in the 1970s, and that "Everything in Zimbabwe is associated with the exploits of President Kim Il Sung."

Because Joshua Nkomo's rival ZAPU movement was aligned with South Africa's African National Congress and thus with the orthodox Moscow-led Soviet bloc, ZANU perforce had to find its foreign funders and arms-suppliers elsewhere, in Bejing and Pyongang. This was a rare break-through for Kim Il Sung, so when Zimbabwe became independent in 1980 it immediately became North Korea's most ambitious diplomatic objective. Hundreds of North Korean military advisers arrived, not only training but equipping much of Mugabe's army, particularly the notorious 5th Brigade, with T-54 tanks, trucks, armoured cars, heavy artillery, anti-aircraft batteries and a plethora of small arms and ammunition. Indeed, for a few years North Korea even dreamt of emulating Cuba and, from its Zimbabwean base, had over 3,000 troops helping the Angolan, Mozambican and Ethiopian governments.

What particularly appealed to Mugabe, however, was that the North Koreans were not only experts in martial arts but in the far blacker art of political indoctrination, having honed their skills in the notorious 밷rain-washing?of US and British prisoners in the Korean War. The essential principle was that if, by physical torture, isolation and relentless humiliation, you could break down someone's personality, it was then possible to re-mould it along more 'acceptable' lines. The full horror of such techniques, first glimpsed in Zanla's liberation war tactics, was fully revealed only in the mid-1980s when Mugabe ordered the 5th Brigade to repress political opposition in Matabeleland. Using North Korean terminology, Mugabe explained that the people there had their chance and they voted as they did. The situation there has to be changed. The people must be re-oriented.' Some 20,000 people died in the resulting campaign of torture and murder but it was not just repression pure and simple. What the villagers grew to fear most was the dreadful all night singing sessions in which they would have to sing ZANU songs with cheerful enthusiasm at the same time that they were savagely beaten, when they would not only have to watch as friends or family members were tortured or shot but would themselves have to assist in the process ?the emphasis always being on achieving their utter humiliation and incrimination so that they could re-emerge at the end as Mugabe loyalists.

One great focus of such loyalty would be the pilgrimage to Heroes Acre, the 140 acre site in Harare which commemorates the heroes of the liberation war. Its huge granite obelisk and Stalinist architecture were North Korean-designed, such monuments being a regime speciality. Kim Il Sung erected over 34,000 monuments to himself and Pyongang also features his Juche Tower, effectively an overs-sized Washington Monument though with a special Zimbabwean plaque on it, and the Arch of Triumph, an equally over-sized replica of the Arc de Triomphe. On Kim's death in 1994 the entire presidential palace was turned into a mausoleum where Kim's embalmed body is still an object of pilgrimage. Pilgrims have to bow to a huge gold statue of Kim and are then marched through to the body itself, where they have to bow three times, and then on to a room in which they can see pictures of Kim with world leaders such as Robert Mugabe.

Kim first announced his philosophy of Juche (self-reliance) in 1972, whereafter North Korea cut itself off from almost all foreign trade and defaulted on all its foreign debts ?steps which Zimbabwe has now emulated. According to Juche, "man is the master of everything and decides everything," and the most important work of revolution and construction is moulding people ideologically as good Communists with absolute loyalty to the Party and Leader? Kim had realised that to achieve this he needed to isolate North Korea from all outside influences ?crimes such as singing a South Korean pop song or reading a foreign newspaper carry a life sentence. Kim would have strongly approved of Mugabe's expulsion of foreign media, his crackdown on the independent press and his slavish broadcast media ?indeed Mugabe's Herald has carried laudatory articles about Juche.

After independence Mugabe was at first prime minister but his first visit to North Korea had an enormous impact on him. 밐e came back almost a different man? one of his former party stalwarts told me. 밐e was tremendously impressed by the stadiums full of people doing mass callisthenics and colour displays spelling out Kim's name or even depicting his face. He came back wanting to change the constitution so that he could become president, like Kim. There was no more primus inter pares about him after that.?Nicolae Ceacescu, the Rumanian dictator, was similarly affected by his visit to Pyongang and returned to Bucharest to launch his 뱒ystematization?programme, knocking down old buildings and churches in order to build marching lines of apartments, North Korean style. Mugabe and Ceaucescu became close to one another so that the downfall and assassination of the Ceaucescus in 1989 were a trauma in Harare, where all news of this terrible event was quickly snatched off the ZTV screen. The fall of Cambodia's Pol Pot, who had also embraced Juche, was similarly unwelcome news in Harare.

When Kim, the Great Leader, died in 1994, the Gregorian calendar was abolished and a new calendar installed in which Year One is 1912 (Kim's year of birth) and in which the first day is April 15, Kim's birthday. Zimbabwe set up its own Committee to Honour the Memory of Kim Il-Sung, chaired by Vice-President Joseph Msika. This holds a special month of mourning for Kim every year, with lectures, seminars and a memorial service 뱎raying for his eternity? Zanu-PF also has its own Juche Committee. Since then the birthday of Kim's son, Kim Jong-Il, 뱓he dear leader? is celebrated as, effectively, the North Korean Christmas: he is 뱓he central brain? 밶 genius of 10,000 talents?and 뱓he morning star? Mugabe, whose birthday (February 21) falls only five days later, has now copied this ?he too is celebrated as 뱋ur dear leader?with the same mass synchronised dancing by women in traditional dress, army parades and the 21st February Movement holds feasts and food distributions ?for, as in North Korea, the faithful are often near starvation. 밄ut the central idea is also the same: everything, including the economy, can be commanded and made to fall into line with the Leader's will? one close Mugabe-watcher told me. 밒n North Korea anyone unable to live with that ended up in the gulag or fled as refugees to China so you ended up with a country where everyone left was totally obedient. This is undoubtedly Mugabe's model.?The oddity is that leaders starting out as Marxists end up as apostles of extreme voluntarism and effectively monarchical authority.

Mugabe's radical socialism Juche, like Mugabe's radical socialism, was a fraud. In reality North Korea depended utterly on Soviet aid, just as liberated Zimbabwe's economy depended completely on a few thousand white farmers. When Soviet aid ceased in 1991 North Korea's income halved and mass starvation ensued, just as it has in Zimbabwe following the eviction of the white farmers. Anywhere up to 3 million North Koreans died but Kim Jong-Il simply denied the facts of starvation and at first turned away food aid. Mugabe did exactly the same. When the World Food Programme offered to help Zimbabwe's starving in 2004 he asked 밯hy foist this food upon us ? We do not want to be choked, we have enough.?In the end both regimes have become massively dependent on foreign food aid.

This week Zimbabwe's Parliament faces Mugabe's proposed constitutional amendment enabling him to choose his own successor and impose him without an election. This too exactly imitates the way in which Kim Il Sung designated his own successor and it allowed Kim to continue to be celebrated long after his death. But there is something else to which Mugabe might pay heed. Although Kim Jong-Il declared three years of mourning for his father, spent nearly $ 1bn. on his mausoleum and declared two national flowers for the country, Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia, his father's death from a heart attack and 밾eavy mental strains?followed a bitter argument with his son and is still clouded with suspicion. Kim Jong-Il would not allow doctors to enter his father's room till long after the death and all the doctors, as also his father's bodyguards, were immediately killed in a series of helicopter 밶ccidents? Other functionaries who had been close to his father all quickly disappeared without trace. So while North Koreans are encouraged to believe that Kim Il Sung still rules and watches over the country, it seems likely that the great man's end was more like the usual tyrant's exit.

RW Johnson (former Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and well-known writer and journalist).

Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny,
And in this judgement there is no partiality.
So arm in arms, with arms, well fight this little struggle,
cause thats the only way we can overcome our little trouble.

No more internal power struggle;
We come together to overcome the little trouble.
Soon well find out who is the real revolutionary,
cause I dont want my people to be contrary.

Natty trash it in-a zimbabwe (zimbabwe);
Mash it up in-a zimbabwe (zimbabwe);
Set it up in-a zimbabwe (zimbabwe);
Africans a-liberate zimbabwe (zimbabwe);
Africans a-liberate zimbabwe (zimbabwe);
Natty dub it in-a zimbabwe (zimbabwe).

Set it up in-a zimbabwe (zimbabwe);
Africans a-liberate zimbabwe (zimbabwe);
Every man got a right to decide his own destiny.

Yea right Bob Marley....are you happy ?
You go turning over in your grave now .

I for one miss Rhodesia

Kim Jong-Il would not allow doctors to enter his father's room till long after the death and all the doctors, as also his father's bodyguards, were immediately killed in a series of helicopter occidents? Other functionaries who had been close to his father all quickly disappeared without trace.

Any additional info about this?

It is true that there was at least one helicopter crash at the time. It is also known that most of close functionaries of Kim Il-sung were completely purged.

To this day, lots of suspicion abound regarding Kim Il-sung's death. The references I know are mostly in Korean.

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