What the commentators said
This is the biggest “seismic change” to hit Africa since the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990, said Michael Holman in the FT. Mugabe’s fall has potentially “transformative consequences” for the region. The coup should “send a chill down the spines” of some other long-serving autocrats, said Simon Tisdall in The Guardian. Among those with reason to feel uneasy are Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni – who, like Mugabe, came to power on the back of a guerrilla struggle, and has ruled since 1986 – and Paul Kagame, who has led Rwanda since 1994.
As for the future of Zimbabwe, said Sean O’grady in The Independent, there is “plenty of cause for optimism”. Despite all of the damage done by Mugabe, the country still has strong fundamentals: a good climate, fertile soil, “majestic” landscapes to attract tourists, plentiful mineral reserves and “mostly friendly neighbours”. Zimbabwe is not your “standard African banana republic”, agreed Ranga Mberi in The Observer. Its infrastructure is in decent shape, and it is blessed with a well-educated, young population (around 70% of its people are under the age of 30) that is “desperate to use its idle skills”.
It’s too early to celebrate, said James Hamill on The Conversation. Mugabe may be gone, but the balance of power in Zimbabwe hasn’t really changed. The army is still calling the shots. And given the “lucrative networks of embezzlement and plunder it has put in place over decades”, it has nothing to gain from liberal reforms. As for Mnangagwa, a man whose ruthless tactics when helping Mugabe rig elections and crush opposition earned him the nickname “the Crocodile”, it’s naive to expect him “to now make a deathbed conversion to democracy”. The sad fact is that coups rarely make things better, said Daniel Hannan in The Sunday Telegraph. “A study of 49 coup attempts between 1989 and 2016 found that, in 48 of them, there was an increase in civilian deaths at the hands of state forces in the ensuing 12 months.” Perhaps Zimbabwe will buck the trend and, like many of its neighbours, move towards becoming a multiparty democracy. “That, though, is not how coups usually work out.”