Africa’s history suggests army will not free Zimbabwe
As I sat down to write this column, news broke that Robert Mugabe had resigned after 37 years in power in Zimbabwe. Wild jubilation ensued in the streets of Harare and Bulawayo. But does this really represent a new dawn?
The hatred of Mugabe has blinded many Zimbabweans and other analysts from recognising the danger of the military toppling an elected leader, no matter how flawed.
Experience from the rest of Africa should engender caution at the prospect of hailing the military as democratic anticorruption messiahs.
In Nigeria, politicians and civil society in 1993 called on Gen Sani Abacha to seize power in the naïve hope that he would somehow hand it over to the presumed winner of the June election, Moshood Abiola. Abacha did seize power, but jailed Abiola when he tried to claim his presidential mandate.
More recently, in 2013, the political opposition and activists from civil society in Egypt cheered on the military coup by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi that toppled the democratically elected Mohammed Mursi. Sisi imprisoned many of the same civil society dissidents after a sham election in 2014.
In Zimbabwe, the military brass who staged this coup are clearly defending their own interests. This is not an effort to clear the Augean stables of the filth of a decadent regime and hand power back to the people.
This is the same military that launched the scorched earth campaign of military terror that prevented Morgan Tsvangirai from taking power in 2008, after defeating Mugabe in the first round of presidential polls. This is the same army that has been accused of stealing millions of dollars from illicit diamond-mining.
The tragedy is that Mugabe was a genuine liberation hero who spent 10 years in jail before leading a successful war that liberated his country from a racist white minority. Cecil Rhodes and his fellow British freebooters had stolen much of the country’s most fertile land in decades of pillage, plunder and dispossession.
In the first decade of his rule, Mugabe built one of Africa’s finest education systems. But he also killed the goose that laid the golden egg. His legacy is a bankrupt country with more than 80% unemployment, a quarter of its 17-million people short of food, and a quarter having left the country.
Despite depictions of Mugabe as an omnipotent dictator, this coup suggests a more nuanced picture. He lost a constitutional referendum in 2000 and the first round of presidential elections in 2008, when a more ruthless autocrat would have rigged both polls.
Mugabe reportedly tried to quit after losing in 2008, but the army allegedly forced him to stay on. He became a hostage of the military, a senescent Macbethian king trapped in his castle. His own Lady Macbeth – Grace Mugabe – goaded him into firing his deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, which led to his downfall.
Mugabe’s reign was full of paradoxes: a British-baiting anti-imperialist, he was also a knighted Anglophile who loved cricket and revelled in British parliamentary traditions. A firebreathing anti-American ended up dollarising his economy. A cunning political operator made the most elementary error in sacking a rival who was backed by Zimbabwe’s securocrats.
Mnangagwa, the new leader, is clearly part of the inner circle that has overseen the country’s decline. “The Crocodile” was state security minister during the massacre in Matabeleland of an estimated 20,000 Ndebele people between 1983 and 1984. He was also reportedly a leading advocate of military repression in 2008.
For Zimbabwe’s soldiers, he represents the safest pair of hands after Mugabe. However, this 75-year-old can scarcely be a credible reformer, let alone a case of generational change.
Mugabe was part of Africa’s club of “presidents-for-life”. He had recently boasted that he would rule “until God says come join the other angels”. The Almighty had other plans, and it is uncertain that paradise will be Mugabe’s final destination.
Zimbabwe’s democracy will not be entrenched through the barrel of a gun. Its citizens should decide who rules the country. Based on the history of Africa’s putschists, this coup may come to represent a case of Mugabeism without Mugabe.
THIS IS THE SAME MILITARY THAT LAUNCHED THE CAMPAIGN OF TERROR THAT PREVENTED MORGAN TSVANGIRAI FROM TAKING POWER THE CUNNING POLITICAL OPERATOR MADE THE MOST ELEMENTARY ERROR IN SACKING A RIVAL WHO WAS BACKED BY ZIMBABWE’S SECUROCRATS