Doctor Robert is back

I was barely in my teens when Robert Mugabe arrived in Moscow, then capital of the Soviet Union, and the Moscow University made him a doctor honoris causa. It must have been 1984… no, 1985. At about the same time, the University of Edinburgh and the University of Massachusetts Amherst bestowed the same honors upon the Zimbabwean PM.

Ten years later, I graduated from that fine school on Sparrow Hills. Thirty years after his, hmmm, endoctorization, Mugabe is coming to Moscow to keep the company of Putin, Maduro, and Raúl Castro at the 2015 victory parade. By now, Edinburgh and Amherst have rescinded Mugabe’s degrees but the MGU Chronicles continues to list him as an “honorary doctor since 1985.”

5 Comments

  1. Mugabe’s the perfect guest for Putin’s World War Two victory parade. After all, this is what he said back in 2003:

    “I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective: justice for his people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people and their rights over their resources. If that is Hitler, then let me be Hitler tenfold. Ten times, that is what we stand for.”

    • Either I did not know it or I had completely forgotten it, but either way it’s a pearl worth quoting on special occasions like the coming parade. Thank you.

      • I think it’s more a statement of Mugabe’s blinding ignorance than a confession he’s actually like Hitler. I suspect Mugabe knows about as much about Hitler, what he did, and what he believed in as he does about running a country competently.

        • Apparently, Mugabe reacted to being called a black Hitler. It’s unbelievable that he should be ignorant of Hitler’s legacy. Mugabe was 15 when WWII began and 21 when it ended. He earned a few real degrees before he was showered with those sham doctorates. Perhaps he grew senile by the turn of the millennium. Or, perhaps, he wanted people to think he was crazy.

          • Yeah, Mugabe probably knew what he was doing. Hitler fought the British after all, so in Mugabe’s book that made him a good guy and/or he knew it would offend his critics in the UK.

            I don’t know whether Mugabe has ever resorted to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories but he seems the type of leader who would be attracted to that kind of thing.

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