Robert Mugabe
As
the tension boils over in Zimbabwe following the hijacking of power by
the military, it has been revealed that a priest is mediating a
potential exit for Mugabe.
Political and intelligence sources on
Thursday revealed that a Catholic priest is mediating a potential
political exit for Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, although the
93-year-old is insisting he can only be removed via a party leadership
vote.
Separately, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who has been
receiving cancer treatment outside Zimbabwe, returned to Harare late on
Wednesday, a party spokesman said, fuelling speculation about a
post-Mugabe political settlement.
NAN reports that Zimbabwe’s military seized power early on
Wednesday targeting “criminals” around President Robert Mugabe but gave
assurances on national television that the 93-year-old leader and his
family were “safe and sound”.
A Reuters witness said soldiers and armoured vehicles blocked roads
to the main government offices, parliament and the courts in central
Harare, while taxis ferried commuters to work nearby.
“We are only targeting criminals around him (Mugabe) who are
committing crimes that are causing social and economic suffering in the
country in order to bring them to justice,” Zimbabwe Maj.-Gen. SB Moyo, Chief of Staff Logistics, said on television.
“As soon as we have accomplished our mission, we expect that the situation will return to normalcy.”
Neither Mugabe nor his wife Grace, who has been vying to succeed her husband as president, have been seen or heard from.
Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change called for a
peaceful return to constitutional democracy, adding it hoped the
military intervention would lead to the “establishment of a stable, democratic and progressive nation state”.
The leader of Zimbabwe’s influential liberation war veterans called
for South Africa, southern Africa and the West to re-engage Zimbabwe,
whose economic decline over the past two decades has been a drag on the
southern African region.
“This is a correction of a state that was careening off the cliff,” Chris Mutsvangwa told Reuters.
“It’s the end of a very painful and sad chapter in the history
of a young nation, in which a dictator, as he became old, surrendered
his court to a gang of thieves around his wife.”
A government source said Finance Minister Ignatius Chombo, a
leading member of the so-called ‘G40’ faction of the ruling ZANU-PF
party led by Mugabe’s wife Grace, had been detained by the military,
Mugabe, the self-styled ‘Grand Old Man’ of African politics, has led Zimbabwe for the last 37 years.
In contrast to his elevated status on the continent, Mugabe is
reviled in the West as a despot whose disastrous handling of the economy
and willingness to resort to violence to maintain power destroyed one
of Africa’s most promising states.
Soldiers deployed across the Zimbabwe capital Harare on Tuesday and
seized the state broadcaster after Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party
accused the head of the military of treason, prompting frenzied
speculation of a coup.
Just 24 hours after military chief Gen. Constantino Chiwenga
threatened to intervene to end a purge of his allies in Mugabe’s
ZANU-PF, a Reuters reporter saw armoured personnel carriers on main
roads around the capital.
Aggressive soldiers told passing cars to keep moving through the darkness.
“Don’t try anything funny. Just go,” one barked at Reuters on Harare Drive.
Two hours later, soldiers overran the headquarters of the ZBC,
Zimbabwe’s state broadcaster and a principal Mugabe mouthpiece, and
ordered staff to leave.
Several ZBC workers were manhandled, two members of staff and a human rights activist said.
Reuters witness said shortly afterwards, three explosions rocked the centre of the southern African nation’s capital.
The United States and Britain advised their citizens in Harare to stay indoors because of “political uncertainty.”
The southern African nation had been on edge since Monday when
Chiwenga, Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, said he was prepared
to “step in” to end a purge of supporters of sacked vice president
Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Only a few months ago, Mnangagwa, a former security chief nicknamed
“The Crocodile”, was favourite to succeed his life-long political
patron but was ousted a week ago to pave the way for Mugabe’s
52-year-old wife Grace to succeed him.
Chiwenga’s unprecedented statement represented a major escalation
of the struggle to succeed Mugabe, the only leader Zimbabwe has known
since it gained independence from Britain in 1980.
Mugabe chaired a weekly cabinet meeting in the capital on Tuesday, officials said, and afterwards ZANU-PF said it stood by the “primacy of politics over the gun” and accused Chiwenga of “treasonable conduct … meant to incite insurrection.”
The previous day, Chiwenga had made clear the army’s refusal to
accept the removal of Mnangagwa – like the generals a veteran of
Zimbabwe’s anti-colonial liberation war – and the presumed accession of
Grace, once a secretary in the government typing pool.
Local government minister Saviour Kasukuwere, a leading figure in
her relatively youthful ‘G40’ faction, refused to answer Reuters
questions about the situation in Harare.
“I‘m in a meeting,” he said, before hanging up shortly before midnight.
Army, police and government spokesmen refused to answer numerous phone calls asking for comment.
Zimbabwe’s Herald newspaper, another government mouthpiece, ran an
article on its front page saying Zanu-PF was “unfazed by Chiwenga”,
according to a picture of its front page posted on Twitter.
Neither Mugabe nor Grace have responded in public to Chiwenga’s remarks and state media did not publish his statement.
The Herald posted some of the comments on its Twitter page but deleted them.
The head of ZANU-PF’s youth wing, which openly backs Grace, accused the army chief of subverting the constitution.
“Defending the revolution and our leader and president is an ideal
we live for and if need be it is a principle we are prepared to die
for,” Youth League leader Kudzai Chipanga said at the party’s
headquarters in Harare.
Grace Mugabe’s rise has brought her into conflict with the
independence-era war veterans, who enjoyed privileged status in Zimbabwe
until the last two years when they spearheaded criticism of Mugabe’s
handling of the economy.
In the last year, a chronic absence of dollars has led to long
queues outside banks and an economic and financial collapse that many
fear will rival the meltdown of 2007 to 2008, when inflation topped out
at 500 billion percent.
Imported goods are running out and economists say that, by some measures, inflation is now at 50 percent a month.
According to a trove of intelligence documents reviewed by Reuters
this year, Mnangagwa has been planning to revitalise the economy by
bringing back thousands of white farmers kicked off their land nearly
two decades ago and patching up relations with the likes of the World
Bank and IMF.
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