This ‘coup’ is part of a Zanu power struggle to protect army’s wealth
Since independence from Britain in 1980, the story of Zimbabwe has been one of gross economic mismanagement, the misery of its people and complete disregard for human rights. In recent years, however, attention has turned towards succession, and the manoeuvring to replace its 93-year old president, Robert Mugabe, has increasingly come to dominate its political landscape.
Vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa has long been seen as the front-runner. He had always been one of Mugabe’s most trusted henchmen, having been at the president’s right hand since independence.
Grace Mugabe, the president’s 53-year-old wife, conscious of her husband’s advanced age and frailty, has more recently been moving with speed and ruthlessness to establish herself as his successor. In the latest of a series of purges to remove potential rivals, she persuaded the president last week to dismiss Mnangagwa.
Her manoeuvring has backfired spectacularly. The beneficiary would appear to be Emmerson Mnangagwa. He has always been close to the security establishment and to the longtime head of the armed forces, General Constantine Chiwenga.
Mr Mnangagwa and his associates have been careful to avoid portraying their move as a coup, since they will be conscious of the high regard in which the African Union and neighbouring countries hold President Mugabe, despite the ruin he has brought to his country. But clearly what is unfolding is a coup in all but name.
There will be relief in many quarters at the end of the Mugabe era, and the removal of the president’s deeply unpopular wife. There will equally be hope that Mr Mnangagwa, who is viewed by many, including in the opposition, as a more pragmatic and business-friendly figure, can arrest Zimbabwe’s downward spiral.
But the action taken by the military was not a rejection of the disastrous policies long pursued by Zanu-pf, of which they have been enthusiastic backers. On the contrary, it was the result of an internal Zanu-pf power struggle to reassert what the security forces would regard as the rightful presidential succession. This would ensure their continued access to the economic benefits of power, which Grace Mugabe’s purge risked disrupting.
Mr Mnangagwa may prove to be a more competent leader than President Mugabe – it would be difficult not to be – but his career sadly offers little evidence to support this.
As Zimbabwe’s first minister of security in the aftermath of independence, he was closely involved in overseeing the massacres in Matabeleland in the 1980s. He has held ministerial positions almost exclusively within the security establishment. And the army, and those allied with it, have been at the forefront of the pillaging of Zimbabwe’s mineral wealth and seizure of white-owned farms.
The international community should encourage Mr Mnangagwa to establish a government of national unity. Zimbabwe has all the ingredients to claw its way back to the prosperity which its long-suffering citizens deserve – but only if Mr Mugabe’s successor has the courage to abandon the disastrous policies of the past.
Mark Canning was British Ambassador to Zimbabwe from 2009-11