How the deadly Crocodile snapped back at his rivals
OUSTED vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa landed at an airforce base in Harare yesterday, ready to wrest power from Robert Mugabe – but many Zimbabweans fear the man known as ‘The Crocodile’ for his political cunning will be as bad if not worse than Mugabe,.
With a reputation for brutality, Mnangagwa is said to be the only man in Zimbabwe to inspire more fear than Mugabe, and has been implicated in orchestrating the massacre of thousands of civilians.
Intimidation, detentions, violence and torture became the tools of power in the regime’s 37-year misrule, and Mnangagwa’s decades of loyalty saw him rise to become the ageing president’s heir apparent, only to be ousted in favour of the despot’s ambitious wife Grace.
Mugabe sacked him – but in losing his henchman, he fatally damaged his support from the military and the powerful war veterans who supported Mnangagwa and who now appears poised to form a unity government which will finally end Mugabe’s reign.
The pair have been politically inseparable since the Sixties, when both were imprisoned for fighting in the struggle for independence from Britain and white minority rule in what was then Rhodesia.
Mnangagwa, the son of a political agitator against colonial laws, was sent to China and Egypt for military training but was arrested after he returned to Rhodesia when he and his gang blew up a locomotive near the Victoria Falls.
He narrowly escaped a death sentence after claiming to be under 21, meaning he was too young to hang, but spent a decade in prison instead, including three years in solitary confinement.
When Zimbabwe became independent in 1980, he was named as the new country’s national security chief and became notorious for his role in the brutal repression of civilians in Matabeleland, in the south. Tens of thousands of civilians were believed to have died during the four-year operation.
He became so feared within Zimbabwe that he was one of the few political figures who travelled without security, safe in the knowledge that no one would risk an attack against The Crocodile.
He had Mugabe’s ear, held various high-ranking ministries and – like countless others at the top of the ruling Zanu-PF party – he appears to have reaped enormous financial rewards from his position of power. Mnangagwa, who has a law degree from the University of London, describes himself as a bornagain Christian and a Chelsea FC supporter, and has spoken of his admiration for Didier Drogba.
He has nine children by two wives and is described as a sharp and business-savvy politician, who understands the need for economic reform in Zimbabwe and plans to revive agriculture by inviting back the country’s former landowners and white farmers.
Now 75, The Crocodile appears to have waited for his chance to bite, and may yet prove to be deadly for Mugabe’s decades-long grip on power.