Army keeps Mugabe cooped up at home
• Zuma speaks to Zimbabwean president • UN, AU and Western countries call for calm
Zimbabwe’s military seized power on Wednesday, saying it was holding President Robert Mugabe and his family safe but targeting “criminals” in the entourage of the man who ruled the nation since independence 37 years ago.
In his first contact with the outside world since the takeover, Mugabe spoke by telephone to President Jacob Zuma, and told Zuma he was confined to his home but fine, the Presidency said.
It was not clear whether the apparent military coup would end the 93-year-old Mugabe’s rule. The main goal of the generals appears to be preventing Mugabe’s wife Grace, 41 years his junior, from succeeding him.
But whether or not Mugabe goes, this may be the end of the his dominance of the country as the last of Africa’s state founders still in power from the era of the struggle against colonialism, and one of the continent’s most polarising figures.
Mugabe plunged Zimbabwe into a new political crisis last week by firing Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa, his presumed successor. The generals, evidently believing that move was aimed at clearing the way for Grace Mugabe to take over, announced on Monday 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,” Maj Gen SB Moyo, chief of staff logistics, said on television.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the African Union and Western countries and called for calm. “We cannot tell how developments in Zimbabwe will play out in the days ahead and we do not know whether this marks the downfall of Mugabe or not,” British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said in the House of Commons.
On Wednesday afternoon, Zimbabweans were going about their routine daily activities. If they had any anxiety about the overnight elbowing out of Mugabe by his generals, they showed very little of it in Harare.
Instead, supermarkets were open for business, children made their way to school admiring the army’s tanks and flights in and out of the recently renamed Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport took off as scheduled.
Information on developments was scant, giving rise to unusually high activity on social media.
Some of the posts were accurate and some clearly fake; like the one that claimed Zuma’s envoys were turned back by the soldiers in Zimbabwe on Wednesday afternoon. Zuma, as Southern African Development Community (Sadc) chairman, sent Defence and Military Veterans Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula and the State Security Minister Bongani Bongo to meet Mugabe and the members of the Zimbabwean Defence Force.
There was also speculation that Grace Mugabe had fled the country via Namibia to the far East — avoiding SA because of her legal woes in the country.
The military is said to have detained the minister of finance, Ignatious Chombo, the local government minister, Saviour Kasukuwere, and the minister of higher education, Jonathan Moyo, staunch allies of Mugabe.
It was also speculated on social media that Mnangagwa, who fled to SA after his dismissal, was back in the country, preparing to put together a government of national unity, said to include Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirayi as prime minister and Joice Mujuru and Zapu leader Dumiso Dabengwa as deputy presidents.
Impala Platinum, majority owner of Zimplats and its second-largest source of platinum group metals, reported its operations were unaffected by the latest political developments in Zimbabwe — the world’s third largest platinum supplier.
Coal miner Hwange, duallisted on the JSE and ZSE, showed little reaction to the political crisis. The share price on the JSE fell 6.67% to 70c but on a small volume of 8,030 shares traded. On the ZSE, it was unchanged at $0.038.