Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola and Julius Nyerereof Tanzania ¿ three African leaders who share a common historical example for the African continent.

They have the distinction of stepping down as political leaders of their countries. In a region that has 53 Independent states that have come into being in the post-World War Two and anti-colonial period; this is the context in which we must view the current political crisis in Zimbabwe where President Robert Mugabe, clearly in the aftermath of the most recent election, has lost power and his right to retain the presidency.

If this were not a political fact, why else does that country's election commission, no doubt under the influence of the Mugabe regime almost a month after the election was held, refuse to release the election results? African political leadership, except for some rare occasions, has by and large failed the people of Africa.

In making such a statement, I draw a distinction between the African people and a leadership that has portrayed the great African dream of self-determination and Independence in which many struggled and fought for and often paid with their lives to see come into being.

Contrast the three African leaders I have named above to that of Mugabe. Although it is accepted that Mugabe can make the claim to be at least one of the founding fathers of Zimbabwe's Independence ihn 1980, having fought for it and having been jailed by the Ian Smith white minority regime then called Rhodesia. The other person in that regard would be long-time nationalist Joshua Nkomo, now deceased, who had, in fact, been on the liberation scene before Mugabe.

Mugabe's claim to be the father of his nation, however, has been sullied by the ruination he has brought upon his country and the people of Zimbabwe.

I was too young to be aware of the first wave of the struggle for African Independence in the post-World War Two era in the early 1960s, but I was quite aware of the second struggle for African Independence when the African people fought against the Portuguese colonial rule in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau and the liberation war fought against Smith's Rhodesian white-dominated state and finally the liberation of South Africa itself and the Independence of South West Africa (Namibia).

I remember hearing the first speech given by Mugabe as Zimbabwe's first African Prime Minister in the aftermath of the bitter liberation war and the agreement for the transfer of political power made at the Lancaster House talks in Britain, between the British as the colonial power. Smith had declared Unilateral Independence from the liberation movement led by Mugabe and Nkomo, his partner in what they called the Patriotic Front.

Perhaps in an omen of what was to come the two liberation leaders would become bitter rivals more than who was going to lead Zimbabwe; a rivalry that Mugabe ultimately won and became Zimbabwe's first black Prime minister. But even so in those early days there was no hint of the political and economic disaster that would later overtake Zimbabwe under Mugabe's rule.

Even the white farmers who still control the best lands were given no cause to fear as Mugabe in that speech declared that Zimbabwe belonged to all its people ¿ African and European. But something happened between that time to this where most white farmers have lost control of their lands and Zimbabwe is on the edge of becoming a failed state in the wake of a collapsed economy.

There is no doubt that Zimbabwe's current state of affairs has its roots in the colonisation of this vast territory inhabited by the Shona and Ndebele peoples who before the arrival of the Europeans had gone to war more than control of the area, but whose ambitions were eclipsed by the movement of white settlers north from then British-ruled South Africa, led by Cecil Rhodes, whose name would be given to the white state of Rhodesia.

Beginning in the 1950s thousands of British settlers, many former soldiers who had served their country in World War Two, would arrive in the territory, adding to the disenchantment of the African people living there, the loss of land and economic exploitation of both Shona and Ndebele alike.

So the struggle in Zimbabwe has always been more than a question of who owns the land. At the Lancaster House talks the new government of Zimbabwe was promised economic aid to buy out the control of the best lands held by British settlers ¿ an agreement that the British ultimately reneged on.

White control of the land was safe as long as the special political privilege remained in place which also saw a specified number of seats set aside for the settler population. But once that was up the pressure to restore lands that had been taken from Africans during the colonial period would increase. But by that time lands held by Zimbabwe's white farmers not only fed the nation but also were the backbone of Zimbabwe's export trade.

Any dismantling of this state of economic affairs was bound to have dire economic consequences for the country as a whole as we have seen in the seizure of white farms. But even so seized land, no matter in whose name they were claimed to be acting for, did not necessarily go to the land-hungry people of Zimbabwe, but to the political elites who support the Mugabe regime, a fact that the British seized on as an excuse for why they reneged on their promise to buy out the white farms.

This is the background to the state of affairs we now see unfolding in Zimbabwe ¿ an original colonial wrong made worse by the policies of a dictatorial political leader who once could lay claim to being the father of the nation who now refuses to give up power.

A bad example of an African political leader, not at all like the three African leaders that I have named. If the current crisis does not see Mugabe stepping down, will we see the people of Zimbabwe finally taking up arms as once their forefathers did against the British colonial rule and later the settlers of Smith's Rhodesia?

If this were to come to pass the Mugabe will be responsible for writing this last regrettable chapter to the consequences of Rhodes' colonial seizure of this benighted land and thus will go down not as the father of Zimbabwe's liberation, but as a villain right along with Rhodes and Smith.