Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Zimbabwe military seizes power
President loses grip on Zimbabwe as military seizes control
HARARE, Zimbabwe — President Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe for nearly four decades as one of Africa’s last liberation leaders still in power, was under house arrest Wednesday, hours after the military announced it had taken him into custody.
The fate of Mugabe, 93, who kept a tight grip on his southern African nation despite his increasing frailty and diplomatic isolation from the West, appeared to be in the hands of former allies and opposition officials negotiating his future.
In the capital, Harare, about a half-dozen tanks were stationed around strategic government buildings and intersections. But shops and banks were open, and most people carried on business as usual, perhaps because the apparent coup had occurred without violence or resistance. Soldiers blocked the main road leading to the airport, which Mugabe, 93, had renamed after himself last week.
The military did not say whether Mugabe had been removed as president, leaving open the possibility that he may be kept on during a period of transition. But whatever happens to him, it appeared increasingly clear Wednesday that an era was coming to a close in Africa. Power appeared to be slipping from Mugabe as outside forces were determining his fate.
For nearly four decades, Mugabe exercised unrivaled authority by distributing healthy doses of power, land and fear. He crushed dissent by overseeing the massacre of thousands of civilians in the 1980s and effortlessly outmaneuvered both rivals in his party and in the opposition. His dominance was so overwhelming that, even in his 90s and weakened by age, potential successors showed extreme deference, choosing to stay quiet until his eventual death.
But he appeared to have gone too far in trying to position his wife, Grace Mugabe, 52, as his successor. She entered politics only two years ago, had no role in the nation’s liberation war and treated with open contempt politicians who had been waiting decades to succeed her husband.
President Jacob Zuma of South Africa said he spoke on the phone with Mugabe on Wednesday morning and that the Zimbabwean leader had said he was fine but confined to his house in Harare.
Emmerson Mnangagwa, the vice president who was ousted by Mugabe last week in a power grab by allies of the president’s wife, was described by officials to be on his way back to Zimbabwe and was widely seen as the country’s new leader.
In Washington, the U.S. State Department said President Donald Trump’s administration was “concerned by recent actions undertaken by Zimbabwe’s military forces” and called on the country’s leaders to exercise restraint. The United States “does not take sides in matters of internal Zimbabwean politics and does not condone military intervention in political processes,” it said in a statement.
Negotiations were underway between Mnangagwa’s allies and opposition parties to possibly form an interim government that would soften international criticism of the military takeover.
No resistance could be seen from forces that had long remained loyal to the president, including the presidential guard and the vast network of secret intelligence that had helped Mugabe keep a grip on the nation despite a crumbling economy and diplomatic isolation.
A soldier mounting a military tank at a major intersection said, “We are here to put things right in the country.”
Mnangagwa, 75, was considered close to military leaders, including the commander of the Zimbabwe Defense Forces, Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, who had threatened military intervention earlier in the week.
Though a veteran of the governing Zimbabwe African National Union — Patriotic Front party, Mnangagwa was also known to be on good terms with Morgan Tsvangirai, the longtime leader of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change.
“We just changed the head of the train,” Chris Mutsvangwa, a close ally of Mnangagwa’s who is also the leader of the war veterans association and a former minister under Mugabe, said in a phone interview.
Mutsvangwa said that, in a possible interim government, Mnangagwa would serve as president and Tsvangirai as prime minister.
“It’s more of a coalition rather than a coup,” Mutsvangwa said. “Mugabe was senile and incapacitated, and things were being run behind the scenes by a small coterie and his wife.”
Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, served in a coalition government before. After a widely discredited election season in 2008 — in which Mugabe’s security forces and supporters attacked, killed or intimidated thousands of opposition members — international anger grew and the nation’s economic crisis intensified, forcing the president to agree to a power-sharing deal.
Tsvangirai was sworn in as prime minister in 2009, but the arrangement was flawed from the start and fell apart after Mugabe regained power in the 2013 elections.
On Wednesday, opposition officials said no decision had been made about a new coalition, adding that they remained wary of entering into any alliance with Mnangagwa.
“We have to make sure we aren’t being sold a dummy,” Elias Mudzuri, a deputy president of the Movement for Democratic Change, said by phone. “We aren’t sure of the endgame. They say this is not a coup, but to us it’s a coup.”
Citizens in Harare meanwhile carried on with their daily lives, walking past the army’s armored personnel carriers to go to work and to shops. Many who have never known any leader but Mugabe waited in long lines at banks to draw limited amounts of cash, a result of this once-prosperous country’s plummeting economy.
Felix Tsanganyiso, who sells mobile airtime vouchers in Harare, said he was following the developments on WhatsApp.
“But I am still in the dark about what is happening,” he said. “So far so good. We are going about our business without harassment. My plea is that whoever takes over should sort out the economy. We are tired of living like this.”
An aide to Tsvangirai — who has been in South Africa for medical treatment — said the opposition leader was on his way back to Zimbabwe on Wednesday.