NGUGI: It took fleeing citizens for world to accept messiah had turned pharaoh

Zimbabwe is mine!” “Tony Blair, keep your Britain, I will keep my Zimbabwe!” Centuries ago in France, Louis XIV had infamously exclaimed, “I am the state” (all state power resides in my person). But even he, the epitome of absolute and megalomaniacal rule, did not claim France as his.

For Robert Gabriel Mugabe, not only did all state power reside in his person, but the country was his personal property. These claims of ownership, made in wild outbursts of anger, were not a figure of speech.