The Crocodile: Can he shake his bad reputation?
ZIMBABWE: Early on Friday morning, local time, a convoy of small trucks flying flags and banners left Kwekwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa’s scruffy, one-street home town in central Zimbabwe, on the 250km journey to the capital Harare.
Some were waving small stuffed fabric crocodiles - a tribute to the new president’s nickname from his days as a teenage guerrilla in the war against white-rule in Rhodesia. One of the banners read ‘‘Kutonga Kwaro Gamba’’ - a Shona phrase praising the king’s rule.
But these supporters were neither native Shona speakers, nor from Zanu-PF’s traditional support base. They were white farmers, and they had a very specific reason for supporting ‘‘Ngwenya’’ - ‘‘The Crocodile’’.
‘‘I am still on my farm because of Mnangagwa,’’ said a white farmer, who asked not to be named. ‘‘Although the size of the farm was reduced, I kept the larger piece because of my excellent relationship with the people around me, my workers, and the Zanu-PF guys.
‘‘I contribute to the party, give them money, ideas. Mnangagwa visited my farm when he was appointed vice president and he gathered the remaining white farmers and said there will be no fresh land invasions,’’ said the farmer, who raises tobacco, maize and cattle on a farm 25 miles outside Kwekwe.
The farmers’ enthusiasm for Mnangagwa as an honest broker and protector underlines the complex, often contradictory stories about him.
Emmerson Mnangagwa was born in 1942 in central Zimbabwe to peasant farmer parents, but was mostly raised in Zambia where he finished school and enrolled in a building course in a college in Lusaka before studying law.
He joined the first liberation movement, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu) as a teenager and took up with Robert Mugabe’s breakaway movement, the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu), two years later.
He rose up the ranks at Mugabe’s side - gaining a reputation as the older man’s shrewd, loyal and utterly ruthless enforcer. He played a significant role at the Lancaster House peace talks in London in 1979, and won a reputation as a pragmatist and conciliator when he befriended several white Rhodesian intelligence operatives who chose to stay on to serve the new Zimbabwean government under Mnangagwa as security minister.
It was a move that paid off when one of those officers saved Mugabe’s life by thwarting an assassination attempt.
But it was also as security minister that he gained a dark stain on his reputation that he struggles to shake off.
In the Eighties, conflict between Zanu and Zapu supporters devolved into an ethnically charged campaign of mass murder, as Mugabe’s North-Korean trained troops rampaged across Matabeleland, the western part of Zimbabwe where Zapu drew support.
Up to 20,000 people are thought to have been massacred, tortured or fled over two years in the campaign, which came to be known as the Gukurahundi.
Mnangagwa, the then-security minister, has long been held responsible and his reputation for crushing rivals has carried into the 21st century.
In recent memory, the most notorious was a campaign of violence and intimidation against the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) during a disputed election that nearly saw Zanu-PF evicted from power in 2008.
In Kwekwe, an MDC stronghold where Mnangagwa also commands loyal support, it is not difficult to find polarised opinions. In 2000, he was thwarted in a bid to become local MP when Blessing Chebundo was elected instead, becoming the first MDC member in parliament.
Chebundo saw off another challenge from Mnangagwa at the 2005 election - despite a campaign of violence and intimidation.
Local residents, who spoke to The Sunday Telegraph ahead of Emerson’s inauguration, expressed both avid support and deep wariness of the new president.
He has long been associated with small-time gold miners, known as makorokozas, and has been accused of profiteering and extortion.
Misheck Dzvova, 34-year-old makorokoza speaking after a few beers said: ‘‘I am very happy that our godfather is president. We are sick of being arrested by police and soldiers sent by the G40 [a Zanu-PF faction loyal to Grace Mugabe] to cripple operations.’’
A 47-year-old male nurse in a sports bar in Kwekwe, who asked for anonymity for safety reasons, was less enthusiastic: ‘‘I am happy that Mugabe has gone. But I am not happy it is Mnangagwa. I am a victim of his violence,’’ he said.
‘‘In the 2008 elections I was working at the hospital when he gave an order that MDC supporters who were victims of violence must not be treated - but we defied this. I was waylaid by thugs he sent and I was left for dead.’’
Others seemed keen to draw a line beneath the past. ‘‘We want to support him because he got rid of Mugabe and wants to fix the economy. But we need to know what he did in the Gukurahundi, and against the MDC,’’ a new supporter said.