(Bloomberg) – Simukai Tabvura knew nothing other than Robert Mugabe's strongman rule in Zimbabwe until his ousting little more than a year ago. The promise of change that accompanied the end of Mugabe's near-four-decade reign has long since withered for the used clothes seller.
"It's like a year of being able to speak freely never happened," said Tabvura, 41, sitting on a home-made wooden stool at her second-hand stall on a broken sidewalk in the capital, Harare. "One day we were able to support who we wanted and the next they came back like before with guns and whips and batons."
The bitter reality of Zimbabwe's political transition offers lessons for countries such as Venezuela, where Nicolas Maduro is clinging to power in the face of mass protests and economic collapse. For if you think it's easy to fix a broken state after the decades-long reign of one brutal leader, Zimbabwe shows that's not the case.
"They say one thing, talk of freedom and openness, let it happen for a while, then with no warning, it's back to the old tactics they always used," said Tabvura.
Hollow pledges
When Mugabe was deposed by the military in late 2017, citizens spilled onto the streets in celebration. Yet pledges of economic recovery and political freedom made by their new leader, Emmerson Mnangagwa, have come to nothing.
Fifteen months into his rule the economy is in the worst state since 2008. Fuel prices are the world's highest, basic goods are scarce and Mnangagwa has presided over the most brutal suppression of urban protests since independence in 1980. Mugabe, now 95 and in ill health, has left a legacy of a dysfunctional economy and a ruling party at war with itself.
It could all have been so different. When Mugabe, the schoolteacher who led a guerrilla army in the 1970s, spoke after winning elections at independence, he preached reconciliation with the white minority that had ruled the nation since 1896.