ZIMBABWE ARMY

Goal appears to be preventing Mugabe’s wife from succeeding him

HARARE This screen grab shows Zimbabwean Major-General Sibusiso Moyo, chief of staff logistics, reading a statement on the military’s seizure of power at the Zimbabwe Broadcasting corporation in Harare yesterday. (Inset) President Robert Mugabe

fresh political crisis last week by firing Emmerson Mnangagwa, his vice-president and presumed successor.

The generals believed that move was aimed at clearing a path for Grace Mugabe to take over and announced on Monday that they were prepared to “step in” if purges of their allies did not end.

“We are only targeting criminals around him (Mugabe) who are committing crimes that are causing social and economic suffering in the country in order to bring them to justice,” MajorGeneral Sibusiso Moyo, chief of staff logistics, said on television.

According to intelligence documents reviewed by Reuters, Mnangagwa had been planning to revitalise the economy by bringing back thousands of white farmers kicked off their land

nearly two decades ago and patching up relations with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Whatever the final outcome, the events could signal a once-ina-generation change for the southern African nation, once one of the continent’s most prosperous, reduced to poverty by an economic crisis Mugabe’s opponents have long blamed on him.

Even many of Mugabe’s most loyal supporters over the decades have come to oppose the rise of his wife, who courted the powerful youth wing of the ruling party but alienated the military, led by Mugabe’s former guerrilla comrades from the 1970s independence struggle.

“This is a correction of a state that was careening off the cliff,” Chris Mutsvangwa, the leader of the liberation war veterans, said.

“It’s the end of a very painful and sad chapter in the history of a young nation, in which a dictator, as he became old, surrendered his court to a gang of thieves around his wife.”

The opposition, Movement for Democratic Change, called for a peaceful return to constitutional democracy, adding it hoped the military intervention would lead to the “establishment of a stable, democratic and progressive nation state”.

Zuma, speaking on behalf of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), expressed hope there would be no unconstitutional changes of government as that would be contrary to both SADC and African Union positions. He urged Zimbabwe’s government and the military “to resolve the political impasse amicably”. Reuters