Tambo’s interview traces the President’s life from his childhood in Zvimba through his student days at Fort Hare, and ends with a “Thank Mr President that was wonderful”, from Tambo.
Picked up by international media, including British TV stations, the interview touches on many aspects of Mugabe’s life, such as how he courted first-wife Sally, his life with Grace, as well as his fight for Zimbabwe’s liberation.
There are also sneak peeks into Mugabe’s thoughts about Gukurahundi, which he says “has a story that hasn’t been talked about. How it started but that is not a story we want to continue.”
On South Africa Mugabe says economically, the country would have turned out differently if the ruling ANC party had taken a tougher stance against the whites during independence negotiations.
“Things would have been different if your dad (Oliver Tambo) had been alive. They would have been a little tougher. They gave too much away,” he says.
However, as SW Radio Africa reported last week, analysts say the interview lacks critical depth, with many describing it as a public relations exercise and an attempt to whitewash Mugabe ahead of the elections.
Prior to the broadcast, Tambo told South African media about his reverence for Mugabe or “Chimurenga Man” as he refers to him, describing him as “warm, charismastic, and very humorous”.
“I feel, honestly, a pride in that man and I think that he has been misunderstood and ill-judged by a lot of the press. He’s made mistakes but in general he’s going to go down in history with a very positive perspective from Africans,” Tambo told the Guardian newspaper.
During the interview, a spell-bound Tambo is heard encouragingly saying ‘yes’ several times, especially when Mugabe blasts the British over the issue of land.
Tambo’s clips on Mugabe’s key moments appear to have been selected to project Mugabe in the best of light: including the president’s reconciliation speech to the Ian Smith regime in 1980, and him telling off the British Blair over sanctions.
Stung by the criticisms before and after the interview’s broadcast on his SABC’s People of the South programme, Tambo has come out guns blazing, accusing his critics of being ‘superficial’.
Confronted by that country’s Talk Radio 702 over the “Mugabe public relations exercise”, Tambo said he has presented Mugabe as he actually is: “What do you mean a PR exercise? What you wanted me to do was to say to him, ‘you’re lying, Robert Mugabe you’re a liar. That’s not true, how dare you say that? You’re a bloody liar’.”
According to the Eye Witness newspaper, Talk Radio 702’s Kienos Kammies had expressed disappointment at the interview’s silence on such issues as land grabs, human rights and political violations that have occurred over the last decade.
Tambo said those who wanted to interview Mugabe on human rights abuses were free to do so, before adding: “I covered a lot of things. Don’t obsess on what you want me to obsess on, because it’s my interview… I am not a politician. I am not there to do the trial of Robert Mugabe, as much as you would like me to do.”
Commenting on the interview, Zimbabwe’s independently-owned Daily News said Tambo’s spin attempts will not hoodwink anyone: “If the polls are peaceful, free and fair — and (Mugabe) accepts defeat if that is the outcome of the ballot — there is a possibility that history may judge him less harshly than at the present moment.
“If the opposite happens, then all this investment in time and effort in public relations work will be a waste of time,” the paper concluded. – SW Radio Africa
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