Generals deny plotting to oust president
Zimbabwe’s military has called an extraordinary news conference to deny rumours they are plotting to overthrow President Emmerson Mnangagwa, fuelling speculation about a putsch. The National Security Council, formed in 2013, is chaired by Mnangagwa, who led the ousting of Robert Mugabe, in 2017. The president did not attend the briefing on Thursday after the council called its first press gathering to insist that there was no plan to install a new leader. ‘‘For the avoidance of doubt, there is no coup in the making,’’ Kazembe Kazembe, the home affairs minister, said as he read from a council statement. He was flanked by heads of the army, police and prisons, the air force and the intelligence agency. The toppling of Mugabe after nearly 30 years in power and the elections that followed in August 2018 purported to end Zimbabwe’s international pariah status. The tone of the briefing, however, revived many of Mugabe’s well-worn themes. Kazembe said that Western diplomats in Harare, the capital, were in cahoots with the opposition to peddle ‘‘falsehoods’’ that the government was using a coronavirus lockdown to crush dissent as well as facing the threat of revolution. The British embassy, among other missions, has spoken out about the torture of an opposition MP and two other women. The trio from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change Alliance were taken back into custody yesterday to face charges for allegedly inventing their story.