Analysts see 'military coup' in Zimbabwe

CAPE TOWN

Despite claims by Zimbabwe’s military that it has not conducted a “coup” even after placing President Robert Mugabe and his controversial wife Grace under house arrest, many citizens, and regional analysts are seeing it as such.

Zimbabweans on Wednesday awoke to a country whose political trajectory had changed almost 180 degrees in 24 hours as the Zimbabwe Defence Force (ZDF) stepped in overnight.

CRIMINAL ELEMENTS

The military, in an early morning televised announcement by senior officers through the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, said they were only removing “criminal elements” that had surrounded Mugabe.

It has been established that the military had overseen the arrest of at least three pro-Mugabe ministers and other leading figures in the so-called Generation 40 (G40) grouping within the Zimbabwean government and ruling party Zanu-PF, which supports Grace Mugabe as the ageing Mugabe’s successor to lead the party and the country.

The immediate issue that brought the long-brewing tensions within the ruling party to a head was Mugabe’s firing of his former vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, on November 6.

Mnangagwa, 75, is a contemporary of Mugabe from the pre-liberation era, when both were involved in the armed struggle against white minority rule in what was then Rhodesia.

The two, jailed by the Rhodesian regime of Ian Smith — they shared a cell for a time — were once very close.

THREATS

But Mugabe sent shock waves through his country and his own party, including the crucial security and military structures that have kept the 93-year-old leader in power for 37 years, when he fired Mnangagwa for allegedly plotting against the government.

Mnangagwa subsequently fled to South Africa, citing “incessant threats” against him and his family.

At Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980 Mnangagwa was appointed Minister of State Security until 1988, when he was made the Minister of Justice. In 2000 he became Speaker of Parliament until 2005.

After a fallout with Mugabe he was made Minister of Rural Housing from 2005 to 2009, which was largely seen as a demotion.

But he made a comeback and rose to the vice-presidency, which he occupied until a Cabinet reshuffle in October this year, shortly before his dismissal by Mugabe, who cited his former armed struggle comrade for “disrespect, disloyalty, deceit and unreliability”.

Behind those words lies a power struggle within the ruling party as Mugabe’s age has caught up with him.

AMBITIOUS

Mugabe has had at least three trips for medical treatment to Singapore this year alone, can hardly stay awake at public events, is frequently incoherent when speaking in public, and has largely been replaced as the country’s figure-head by his much younger and hyper-ambitious wife, Grace.

Within Zanu-PF, Mnangagwa is highly thought of and has strong support, but his ouster in favour of Grace brought to the surface seething underlying tensions between rival clans of the dominant Shona ethnic grouping in Zimbabwe.

The removal of Mnangagwa as head of the Joint Operations Command meant that the army was facing dissension not only from ordinary Zimbabweans, but also within its own ranks too.

These divisions, sources told the Nation yesterday, could have, and even were likely to, lead to civil war if not headed off.

The ZDF is made up of mostly Karanga and Rozvi Shona tribal clans, both being part of the Western Shonas with seven sub-clans in that grouping, and numbering about 4.5 million out of Zimbabwe’s total population of 10.7 million.

SPIES

The Karanga collective of clans is the largest linguistic sub-grouping in the country, and opposed to them are the Eastern Shonas, mainly Zezuru, numbering 3.2 million, and also with seven sub-clans.

Faced with splits within its own security apparatus, which has kept popular dissension suppressed through harsh policing tactics, many spies and the use of the army over the last 15 years, the ZDF leadership appears to have been left with no choice but to step in or allow the situation to deteriorate into all-out clan-based conflict, both within the security establishment and on the streets.

An indicator of the extent of the divide is that the head of the much-feared Zimbabwean Central Intelligence Organisation is reportedly among those arrested.

Many Zimbabweans initially feared to speak openly about what was happening, but as the day progressed, and especially after news leaked out the Mnangagwa was back in Zimbabwe and engaged in talks with various parties there, there was increasing commentary on Twitter and in other social media.

COUP

Regional analysts say that the ZDF’s assertion that it has not engaged in a coup were obviously misleading since the house arrest of Mugabe and his wife, along with the detention of others meant that it was indeed a coup.

“It is definitely a coup, in the sense that there’s been a military intervention in the highest office of the state and state functionaries, such as the public broadcaster, have been taken over,” Liesl Louw-Vaudron, analyst for the SA-based Institute of Security Studies, was quoted as saying.

Others who are experts on Zimbabwe’s often opaque and complex power politics agree.

Temba Mliswa, a former Zanu-PF member of Parliament, said the army’s action was necessary because “you cannot have Grace Mugabe usurping the powers of the presidency” as he alleges she has increasingly done.

He cited Mrs Mugabe’s interference in the prosecution of a corrupt minister — one of her key supporters— during a speech at a recent ZANU-PF rally.