Mugabe resists pressure to quit
HARARE (Reuters) – President Robert Mugabe is insisting he remains Zimbabwe’s only legitimate ruler and is refusing to quit after a military coup, but pressure is mounting on the 93-year-old former guerrilla to accept offers of a graceful exit, sources said on Thursday.
A political source who spoke to senior allies holed up with Mugabe and his wife, Grace, in his lavish “Blue Roof” compound in the capital city of Harare, said Mugabe had no plans to resign voluntarily ahead of elections scheduled for next year.
“It’s a sort of standoff, a stalemate,” the source said. “They are insisting the president must finish his term.”
The army’s takeover signaled the collapse – in less than 36 hours – of the security, intelligence and patronage networks that sustained Mugabe through 37 years in power and built him into the “Grand Old Man” of African politics.
A priest mediating between Mugabe and the generals, who seized power on Wednesday in what they called a targeted operation against “criminals” in Mugabe’s entourage, has made little headway, a senior political source told Reuters.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai called for Mugabe’s departure “in the interest of the people.” In a statement read to reporters, Tsvangirai pointedly referred to him as “Mr. Robert Mugabe,” not “President Mugabe.”
The army appears to want Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, to go quietly and allow a smooth and bloodless transition to Emmerson Mnangagwa, the vice president Mugabe sacked last week, triggering the political crisis.
The main goal of the generals is to prevent Mugabe from handing power to his wife, Grace, 41 years his junior, who has built a following among the ruling party’s youth wing and appeared on the cusp of power after Mnangagwa was pushed out.
Mugabe, the last of Africa’s state founders from the heyday of the struggle against European colonization to remain in power, is still seen by many Africans as a liberation hero. But he is reviled in the West as a despot, whose disastrous handling of the economy and willingness to resort to violence to maintain power, pauperized one of Africa’s most promising states.
Once a regional breadbasket, Zimbabwe saw its economy collapse in the wake of the seizure of white-owned farms in the early 2000s, followed by runaway money-printing that catapulted inflation in 2008 to 500-billion percent.
Millions, from highly skilled bankers to semi-literate farmers, emigrated, mostly to neighboring South Africa, where an estimated three million still live.
After a brief revival under a 2009 to 2013 power-sharing government, when Mugabe was forced to work with the opposition, the economy has once again cratered, with dollars scarce, inflation surging, imports running out and long lines outside banks.
A fighter, both literally and figuratively during a political career that included several assassination attempts, Mugabe now appears to have reached the end of the road.
With the army camped on his front door and the police – once seen as a bastion of support – showing no signs of resistance, force is not an option. Similarly, he has no popular backing in Harare, where he is widely loathed, and his influence in the ruling ZANU-PF Party is evaporating.