I used to write a fair amount about West Germany and report on the federal elections. Like most American journalists, historians, political analysts, and politicians—and most Germans, for that matter—I could not imagine the collapse of the Soviet empire and the unification of the two Germanies.
Not in my lifetime, at any rate: The Berlin Wall, which was built when I was 11 years old, seemed destined to remain a permanent fixture. But of course, as we know now, the Soviet Union did disintegrate, the wall came tumbling down—I keep a few fragments in a glass receptacle—and “the former East Germany” joined the Federal Republic in 1990.
In retrospect, it was a surprisingly swift transition; and it is often forgotten now that a unified Germany, the cause of much sorrow and tragedy in the 20th century, was controversial at the time. Still, the process was irresistible: Central and Eastern Europe had suffered under Moscow since the end of World War II, and the languishing East Germans were eager to join their free, prosperous brethren in the West.
Yet I was always surprised, when visiting Germany in subsequent years, by the widespread sense of disappointment and impatience. Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who underestimated the economic backwardness of the East, had promised “blooming landscapes” (blühenden Landschaften) once Germans were rid of their Russian tormentors and working together again.
But it was not so easy: The cost of absorbing impoverished East Germany into the booming West German economy was (and remains) high, and easterners felt like second-class citizens in their new land. I well remember a (West) German financier telling me, with wonder in his voice, that revitalizing an industrial project in the East was like “operating a factory in Indonesia, but everyone speaks German.”
To my mind, anyone who had spent time in both East and West Germany, as I had done, could harbor no illusions about the costs or timetable for unification. Kohl was right about the blooming landscapes, but the process was bound to be slow, very arduous, and expensive. Yet the Germans, in their understandable excitement, seemed to have expected an overnight transformation.
I was reminded of this elementary lesson in human nature by a recent Washington Post story about Zimbabwe. The southern African republic’s autocratic leader, 93-year-old Robert Mugabe, had been forced from office in 2017 after 37 years of terror and misrule. “Euphoric tears are what many Zimbabweans remember shedding a year ago,” wrote reporter Max Bearak, on “the most momentous day in the country’s post-independence history.” But one year later:
I have no doubt that the report is accurate: Zimbabwe is desperately poor and politically isolated, and Mugabe was displaced not by popular uprising but a kind of palace coup. The current regime is headed by a man named Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was one of Mugabe’s most fearsome lieutenants. Things could well get worse, if possible, before they get better.
But in my view, it’s also a besetting sin of journalism to overestimate the promise of resistance, upheaval, liberation, and regime change. Or misread it entirely. Joy at the downfall of Mugabe was understandable, but joy quickly dissipates in the cold light of dawn—especially when the names change while the system prevails.
Of course, this was not the theme of last year’s reporting, which largely consisted of images of street celebrations and analysts predicting a swift infusion of foreign capital to revive the economy—Zimbabwe is especially rich in mineral resources—thereby lifting Mugabe’s long-suffering subjects out of oppression.
In that sense, however, Zimbabwe’s new autocrat is correct: Political reform, if it ever happens, will indeed “take time [and] patience.” And if the example of rich, industrialized Germany is any guide, the transition of the onetime colony of Rhodesia from Mugabe’s long tyranny to blooming landscapes will take a very long time, near-infinite patience—and considerably more reform than President Mnangagwa seems inclined to tolerate.
The sad fact of history, ancient and modern, is that revolutions don’t necessarily make people happy, or improve their lot, any more than legislation alters human character. Uprisings, especially against the Mugabes of the world, appeal to the emotions, and there is a kind of ecstasy in mass demonstrations. But you would think that the example of Paris in the 1790s or Moscow in the 1930s might prompt would-be insurgents (and the people who write about them) to pause and reflect. The Batista regime in Cuba was surely unpleasant in many respects; but the New York Times-certified romance of his replacement, Fidel Castro, only yielded a deeper, and infinitely crueler, tyranny.
This is not to suggest that there is no point in resisting oppression or battling dictators. But it is to say that journalists, writing their much-advertised first drafts of history, ought to strive for less romance and more realism. The intoxicating Arab Spring of 2010-12 was both surprising and, to some degree, unprecedented; but while its promise was realized in some places (Tunisia) its perils were revealed beyond measure in others (Syria). The collapse of the Soviet Union was a Good Thing, by any measure; but in its aftermath, there have been varying degrees of goodness (Germany, the Czech Republic, Lithuania) and its opposite (Belarus, Azerbaijan, Russia itself).
Poor Zimbabwe, in the meantime, will be lucky if its agony attracts much press interest. In the 1950s and ’60s there was no more widely reported story, or cause for editorial optimism, than the independence movements in colonial Africa. But while imperialism remains a term of opprobrium, the verdict on postcolonial Africa (when it’s rendered at all) is decidedly mixed.
There was much excitement about Rhodesia-turned-Zimbabwe in the media when the British handed over power to Mugabe and friends (1980)—and four decades later, even more excitement when Mugabe’s friends placed him under house arrest (2017). But shouldn’t journalism do more than chronicle excitement?
