Arthur Guseni Oliver “Ago” Mutambara, Zimbabwe’s deputy prime minister, fiddles with his Che Guevara-style black Kangol cap, moving it around his head throughout our interview.

“Today I am incognito,” he says. Actually, he is the most conspicuous person in the sizeable Sandton hotel lounge and is, in fact, approached by a young woman who congratulates him on his new position.

“I’ve a country to run,” he says. Two bodyguards wait outside – at least he says there are only two.

Ten days after the swearing in of the government of national unity, he says that he has no job description yet, nor does he have an idea of the perks of the job. “I don’t need them.”

He is erratic; alternately angry and entertaining, he ticks me off for “being late” although I was dead on time. He thinks on the hoof, changing his mind as he speaks, saying often, “Don’t quote me; don’t quote me!”

Which aspect, I wonder, should I keep under wraps? The previous day, at a seminar on youth, intellectuals and politics at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), students ridiculed him, warning that he may follow in the footsteps of Robert Mugabe.

When I remind him of this, he says, “That is a good point. Yes, I could become a dictator. No one should trust me or take me at my word. We have systems, we have valid institutions and we depend on those. Until 1980, you would be slaughtered for criticising Mugabe before he was crowned. Don’t ever be dependent on personalities!”

Mutambara is a work in progress.

He wants feedback about his on-stage performance at UJ, which was dramatic, in the mould of the holy roller televangelist. Sweeping movements accompanied his political preaching. I tell him he should borrow Kwame Nkrumah’s nickname of “Showboy”.

“I am just a Zimbabwean; I am very passionate about my views; if I come across very strongly, I am someone who is very determined but a strong democrat. I believe in rational disputation. I love a good debate.”

For a rocket scientist ranked among Africa’s top scientists, his approach to politics is curiously unscientific.

“I’m a very different kind of politician. I don’t suffer fools. You understand that? I might have to do so in politics.

I don’t suffer fools

But I don’t suffer fools. I am an independent thinker; I challenge conventional wisdom.

That is why you find me against Morgan [Tsvangirai] on television. You foolish media people think Morgan is a saint. If Morgan makes mistakes, I don’t cover for him.

We are getting on very well. Now is the time to deliver, time to work, we are working very closely together.”

Since creating the breakaway Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), running against Tsvangirai’s MDC, Mutambara has flip-flopped and swerved.

Once, he was against Mugabe, then he was against Tsvangirai, then he supported Simba Makoni when he could have been joining hands with Tsvangirai against Zanu-PF in the March 2008 election.

This obduracy led to the failure of the MDC to win sole control of Parliament. But now Mutambara has said he is for Tsvangirai – although he is widely perceived to be for Mugabe. He says: “Many people still loved Mugabe in 1988. I hate it when people say I am pro-Mugabe. It is not true. I fought Mugabe! I am for Zimbabwe. It is a very cheap manifestation of intellectual laziness to say that anyone critical of the West is a supporter of Mugabe.”

He stresses the “complementarity” in the government of national unity, implying that both Zanu-PF and the MDC should shoulder equal responsibility for the state of Zimbabwe, but he is unwilling to provide empirical evidence for this.

An ardent anti-imperialist, he quotes Otto von Bismarck, the 19th century imperialist German chancellor and prime minister, who said, “Politics is the art of the possible”. Arthur Mutambara was born on 25 May 1966. His curriculum vitae reveals that he is a high technology expert and leader, a global strategy specialist and an entrepreneur.

He was the author of three engineering books, he is a Rhodes Scholar, with an MSc (computer engineering) and a PhD (robotics and mechatronics) from Oxford University, and a BSc (Hons) (electrical engineering) from the University of Zimbabwe.

He was also a research scientist and professor of robotics and mechatronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at NASA. He says his parents (Philemon was a Fort Hare graduate and his mother, Effie, a primary schoolteacher) spawned four PhD graduates.

“Whoever came back from school who was not first in class was scorned.”

Go to page 2 for a blunt one-on-one with a grumpy Mutambara...
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