Weary nation hangs its hopes on an archetype of the old order
EMMERSON MNANGAGWA, whose political obituary was being written a fortnight ago, was preparing to return to Zimbabwe last night to take over as the country’s president.
Having served the briefest of exiles in South Africa, Mr Mnangagwa will be sworn in as leader of an interim unity government as early as today, said Zanu-pf, the ruling party.
Completing his revenge against the man who triggered the coup by sacking him, Mr Mnangagwa is expected to receive the offices of state from Robert Mugabe in person, an exquisitely executed moment of final humiliation.
“Never should the nation be held at ransom by one person again, whose desire is to die in office whatever the cost of the nation,” Mr Mnangagwa said yesterday, shortly before Mr Mugabe’s resignation was announced.
But many in Zimbabwe fear they risk replacing one despot with another.
“We have removed a tyrant but not yet a tyranny,” David Coltart, a prominent opposition MP, wrote on Twitter.
For although Mr Mnangagwa may have become the repository of a weary nation’s hopes, he has few democratic credentials to boast of.
If anything, he was the archetype of the ancien régime, indefatigable in his loyalty to Mr Mugabe from the early Sixties as they waged war together to remove the minority white government of Ian Smith, which had broken away from British rule.
Mr Mnangagwa served years in prison after his “Crocodile Gang” murdered
‘Never should the nation be held at ransom again by one person, whose desire is to die in office whatever the cost’
a white farmer and sabotaged a train locomotive, actions that helped precipitate Rhodesia’s civil war.
His political apprenticeship in the newly independent Zimbabwe was soaked in blood. As Mr Mugabe’s spy chief, he was accused of masterminding the killing of thousands as the regime exploited a minor uprising by the Ndebele minority to crush the president’s political foes. Mr Mnangagwa has denied responsibility.
Later, he allegedly accumulated vast wealth after Zimbabwe intervened in the late Nineties to prop up the regime of Laurent Kabila, the late president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, against a rebellion.
Zimbabwean officials profited handsomely from the exploitation of conflict diamonds from the mines around the Congolese town of Mbuji-mayi. A UN investigation recommended sanctions against him, but these were never imposed. The intervention in Congo nearly bankrupted Zimbabwe, and was one of the factors that prompted Mr Mugabe to order the seizure of whiteowned farms.
Mr Mnangagwa now claims he never supported the policy and has even suggested compensating dispossessed farmers. It is this apparent pragmatism that has convinced many Western powers that the incoming president may be the man to revive Zimbabwe after years of self-inflicted economic turmoil.
Whether such optimism in a man who revels in his moniker “The Crocodile” is warranted remains to be seen.
But, for now, the Crocodile in whom Zimbabweans have invested their hopes is grinning more broadly than ever.