OPINION / 19 SEPTEMBER 2019, 5:30PM / HENNING MELBER Robert Mugabe African News Agency (ANA) Archives The death of Robert Gabriel Mugabe, 95, saw another of the first-generation leaders of newly independent southern African states leave the world stage. Southern Africa was the last region on the continent to obtain majority rule. The independence of Zimbabwe (1980), Namibia (1990) and democracy in South Africa (1994) ended white settler minority regimes. They were replaced in power by liberation movements. The Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu, later Zanu-PF), the South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo) and the African National Congress (ANC) have been in government since then. Mugabe’s death invites a look at the succession – or lack of – in these three countries. Despite the cultivation of heroic narratives and patriotic history, the first-generation freedom fighters who took over the state offices are not immortal....