12 ms·

Zimbabwe's Military in Apparent Takeover, Says It Has Custody of President

81 points by dingoonline 9y ago

partycoder 9y ago
Robert Mugabe has been president of Zimbabwe since 1987. That is, 30 years.
- igitur 9y ago
  And initially he was a very good leader. But lately, if you listen to his speeches, he is downright senile. And he can hardly walk on his own. That's why the general convention of serving a maximum of 2 or 3 terms is so important.
  - mhogomchungu 9y ago
    How effect is this if its possible to be elected into office at a very late age.
  - thisisit 9y ago
    As they say - Either you die (or step down in this case) a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. There are multiple cases in developing countries where the family/friends takes over in case of someone powerful going senile.
    - steve19 9y ago
      > Either you die (or step down in this case) a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Evil is a choice, not a consequence of time. He destroyed that country, at the expense of the poor and to the profit of his cronys. I wonder if this will impact North Korea. Zimbabwe is a major source of hard currency in exchange for weapons.
      - microcolonel 9y ago
        > I wonder if this will impact North Korea. Zimbabwe is a major source of hard currency in exchange for weapons. I smell CIA. :- )
    - forapurpose 9y ago
      > Either you die (or step down in this case) a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. In many countries these days, you are simply voted out of office or leave it when your term is up.
    - b3lvedere 9y ago
      Which is why there must be good rules that people can't stay in power for too long. Power will corrupt eventually even the nicest of people.
    - gaius 9y ago
      When was Mugabe a hero? Like, what year and what heroic thing did he do?
  - misja111 9y ago
    Long before he turned senile, he turned corrupt. He has ruined his country economically. This is the real reason for a maximum of 2 or 3 terms. Power corrupts.
    - rb666 9y ago
      It's recently been proven you only need 1 year for this.
      - mathw 9y ago
        In the case I think you're thinking of, the corruption was pre-existing.
    - partycoder 9y ago
      Also when a regime has been involved in crime, they need to perpetuate themselves in power to avoid prosecution.
    - kbart 9y ago
      "This is the real reason for a maximum of 2 or 3 terms. Power corrupts." It's still easy to be gamed, see Putin-Medvedev-Putin switch.
  - grandinj 9y ago
    If by "good" you mean "adept at removing his enemies and any constraints on his power", then yes, he was very good
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    > initially he was a very good leader When? What did he do that was good? He didn't implement democracy; that would have been good.
  - anon989 9y ago
    When was he a good leader? When he was sanctioning the genocide of the Matebele people in 1983?
    - StanislavPetrov 9y ago
      No, when he hyperinflated the currency and bankrupted the country (in the 90s, not the most recent hyperinflation).
  - Gustomaximus 9y ago
    I've seen a few comments from 'initially he was a very good leader' followed by some criticism. I didnt know the answer so google wiki and while a lite verison of events it might help people understand things better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe#Prime_Minister_of_Zimbabwe:_1980.E2.80.9387 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe#Prime_Minister_o... Largely to me it seems he started with genuinely 'good intentions' that didn't work out, vs being a 'good leader'. Good to me includes both vision and execution.
    - igitur 9y ago
      It's probably wrong to reduce a person's success to one measure. He obviously had his failures, but his contributions to Zimbabwe's healthcare and education systems are what I remember and is why I called him a good leader early on. Even today, here in neighbouring South Africa, there is a big gap in the average literacy rate of Zimbabwean and a South African. Mugabe totally stuffed up the country later. But credit where credit is due.
- anon989 9y ago
  He was the prime minister and effectively the leader of Zimbabwe since 1980.
thisisit 9y ago
"While denying that the military had seized power, they said that Mr. Mugabe and his family “are safe and sound, and their security is guaranteed.” “We are only targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes that are causing social and economic suffering in the country in order to bring them to justice," This doesn't look good.
- lb1lf 9y ago
  According to (whoever controls...) the official Zanu-PF twitter account, Robert Mugabe and his wife has been detained. The former vice president, Mnangagwa (who was sacked by Mugabe last week, so that his wife Grace could take the #2 spot) is acting president, according to an army statement. Also, reports of gun and artillery fire from northern Harare - the district where Mugabe and his cronies live. Also, predictably, the army claims this is not a coup, and that they are merely acting to preserve the constitution and the republic. (That being said, if one is to stage a coup somewhere, one could find a less deserving country than Zimbabwe; let's just hope the army has the good sense to hand over power to civilian authorities ASAP.)
  - anon989 9y ago
    That is not their official twitter handle. I wouldn't take what they tweet as an official statement from ZanuPF
  - tasssko 9y ago
    I know people that live in northern Harare and they haven't heard any gun and artillery fire. They live within a 3-5km radius of RM and his cronies also they haven't seen any tanks - yet. All very curious, but something is up.
    - gaius 9y ago
      According to Wikipedia, Zimbabwe's army has no serviceable tanks.
- Lazare 9y ago
  > This doesn't look good. Who for? The situation in Zimbabwe is bad enough that things could hardly get much worse. Worst case, one corrupt dictator gets replaced by a different successor than would otherwise have been the case. It's not like a military junta could be less democratic or more corrupt than the existing regime, after all.
vuyani 9y ago
I wish our neighbors well! its been a long time over due.I really hope it will be a peaceful transition, as SA has their own problems they need to deal with(cANCer)! We cannot have a refugee crisis and a civil war on our borders
NaliSauce 9y ago
Shouldn't he have been removed quite some time ago for violating the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide?
- yorwba 9y ago
  Removed by whom?
  - NaliSauce 9y ago
    I suppose that's one of the UNs weakness in that they lack the ability to enforce a lot of conventions.
    - camus2 9y ago
      And to put whom in power instead of him? It doesn't work.
      - NaliSauce 9y ago
        It's been done before by the UN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodia#Vietnamese_occupation_and_transition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodia#Vietnamese_occupation... TL;DR: Regime in cambodia genocides about 1/4 of its population between 1975-79, is removed from power by Vietnam. UN helps recovery from destruction of society by previous govt & transition to new govt which after some initial chaos stabilizes. It's still not a proper democracy, but at least it isn't genocidal. Considering the extremely difficult circumstances (a genocide so bad that it destabilized society & vietnam being an authoritarian regime), I am actually impressed by what the UN managed to pull off.
    - netsharc 9y ago
      A world government with a force would be an interesting concept. Corrupt African states has lead to their citizens fleeing to Europe with EU solutions being band-aids like giving Libyan coast guard ships and money to prevent the ships from leaving Libyan waters, the better solution would be to fix corruption and help development in the refugees' home countries, but the EU governments can't do that, can they (giving the governments money would just mean the leaders would be able to afford a new villa and a few more Mercedes Benzes).
forapurpose 9y ago
There have been several coups or other undemocratic assumptions of power recently: Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, China (Xi seems to have made himself dictator-for-life), Turkey, and to a degree in Japan, in at least one Eastern European country, and even in France (which AFAIK now has an indefinite state of emergency curtailing rights of citizens). I wonder how much and in what way they are related to the U.S. changing its long-standing policy from being the guarantor of international order, and from being an advocate for democracy as a universal right. Some examples in my list started before the current US policy went into effect, but perhaps the US is accelerating a trend, merely responding to it, or even taking an active hand (during the Cold War the US played an active role in such things, from Congo/Zaire to Chile to Iran to Indonesia to many other places). Perhaps others are taking active hands now that the US is out of the picture (to a significant degree) as guarantor. That trend, away from democracy, is very serious and is the headline here for me. Generations fought, struggled and died to establish the legacy of democracy and human rights that we inherited; what are we building for the next generation? It feels like we are just gambling away the family inheritance.
- relyio 9y ago
  France has lifted its state of emergency two weeks ago after a new anti-terror law was passed by the government. While I wasn't fond of it, I am not sure it is fair to call it "undemocratic". It was hard to get out of that state of emergency precisely because it was 1/ popular 2/ politically dangerous (what happens if a major scale attack happens right after it is being lifted?).
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    Thanks for the update. > I am not sure it is fair to call it "undemocratic". > It was hard to get out of that state of emergency precisely because it was 1/ popular 2/ politically dangerous (what happens if a major scale attack happens right after it is being lifted?). If we define 'democratic' in the literal sense, majority rule, then I agree. But that's mob rule and not what people mean when they talk about democracy. Civil rights - protection of the minority from the majority - are assumed to be essential, and the state of emergency (if I understood correctly) suspended those rights to a degree. Civil rights exist specifically for situations like this one. The way I remember it is the saying: 'Democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner'.
zimzim 9y ago
background: President is old and have succession problems. In recent years his wife trying to grab more and more power to be the next president but not everyone in the ruling party like that. last week she (from the mouth of the president) fired "number 2" in the country. since then everyone who was "friend" with number 2 was fired too. when they tried to get rid of the army general (friend of number 2) he refused to leave his office in claim that president wife doing undemocratic things. yesterday he did the "takeover". its not yet clear if the president will switched with the number 2 guy (the friend of the general).
- anon989 9y ago
  >"when they tried to get rid of the army general (friend of number 2) he refused to leave his office" That was never confirmed
  - zimzim 9y ago
    Its not the kind of things you can get confirmation. He was called a traitor in official letter yesterday.
    - anon989 9y ago
      He was called a traitor after issuing a statement that was a veiled threat against Mugabe. You are spreading inaccurate information
- erikb 9y ago
  Really interested to read more about this. This is really the most critical point of the succession question: Who can get the military to follow him. Both the highest general and the government leader have strong claims for military leadership and there is no pure logical answer if highest general and government leader don't agree. All depends on what happens between the different parties.
  - Flenser 9y ago
    There's a good summary here: https://www.thezimbabwean.co/2017/11/standoff-zimbabwe-struggle-succeed-mugabe-deepens/ https://www.thezimbabwean.co/2017/11/standoff-zimbabwe-strug... From today: listen to this from around 8:10 (it starts at 6am, so skip to 2:10) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09drjhz http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09drjhz
felipelemos 9y ago
It's good to remember that he is in power since 1980. Calling a dictator as a President doesn't make him one. And this doesn't make the takeover good or bad, btw.
gaius 9y ago
Pre-Mugabe Zimbabwe was known as "the breadbasket of Africa" for the productivity of its farms. Mugabe brought economic collapse and famine, while living a life of luxury and stashing billions overseas. Hopefully whoever comes next will be a better leader.
- zimzim 9y ago
  It was a different country. how well can ex-slaves and bushman run a country? democracy is not rooted in every culture, greed is :\ EDIT: just to be clear not every person in charge is ex-slave or something, but as a country even if they started financially strong it does not mean they had the culture to support it
  - tankenmate 9y ago
    Greed per se is not the problem, it is greed above all else. The number one problem in Zimbabwe is corruption. Only once there is a strong body, be that courts, a corruption commission, or similar, that has the power to hold those in power to account then little will change. Zimbabwe badly need an effective rule of law that provides justice to all.
  - TausAmmer 9y ago
    Where there is leader(governing group/body/system), there is power trip, have not seen otherwise. There will never be something different.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    Ah, colonialism. Construct a system designed to prevent people from having autonomy or self-governance while shipping their value overseas, then smear them as primitives when they take over and have difficulty with autonomy.
- danmaz74 9y ago
  Let's hope so, but this looks more like an internal power struggle from the existing regime, so I don't expect any of the two factions to want real change (except about who gets the power and billions).
i_feel_great 9y ago
These African countries always remind me of Darwin's Nightmare[0]. There is an interview with Raphael at 1:20:41 in which he says he wants a war because he can earn more money then. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcnTWAyzhbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcnTWAyzhbg
WillReplyfFood 9y ago
A new strong man will appear. He will talk about a fresh start, a new aera, the press will celebrate him, his followers will demand part of the loot- transparency iternational celebrates his existance, the cycle goes on and on.

81 points by dingoonline 9y ago

partycoder 9y ago

Robert Mugabe has been president of Zimbabwe since 1987. That is, 30 years.

igitur 9y ago
And initially he was a very good leader. But lately, if you listen to his speeches, he is downright senile. And he can hardly walk on his own. That's why the general convention of serving a maximum of 2 or 3 terms is so important.
- mhogomchungu 9y ago
  How effect is this if its possible to be elected into office at a very late age.
- thisisit 9y ago
  As they say - Either you die (or step down in this case) a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. There are multiple cases in developing countries where the family/friends takes over in case of someone powerful going senile.
  - steve19 9y ago
    > Either you die (or step down in this case) a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Evil is a choice, not a consequence of time. He destroyed that country, at the expense of the poor and to the profit of his cronys. I wonder if this will impact North Korea. Zimbabwe is a major source of hard currency in exchange for weapons.
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      > I wonder if this will impact North Korea. Zimbabwe is a major source of hard currency in exchange for weapons. I smell CIA. :- )
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    > Either you die (or step down in this case) a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. In many countries these days, you are simply voted out of office or leave it when your term is up.
  - b3lvedere 9y ago
    Which is why there must be good rules that people can't stay in power for too long. Power will corrupt eventually even the nicest of people.
  - gaius 9y ago
    When was Mugabe a hero? Like, what year and what heroic thing did he do?
- misja111 9y ago
  Long before he turned senile, he turned corrupt. He has ruined his country economically. This is the real reason for a maximum of 2 or 3 terms. Power corrupts.
  - rb666 9y ago
    It's recently been proven you only need 1 year for this.
    - mathw 9y ago
      In the case I think you're thinking of, the corruption was pre-existing.
  - partycoder 9y ago
    Also when a regime has been involved in crime, they need to perpetuate themselves in power to avoid prosecution.
  - kbart 9y ago
    "This is the real reason for a maximum of 2 or 3 terms. Power corrupts." It's still easy to be gamed, see Putin-Medvedev-Putin switch.
- grandinj 9y ago
  If by "good" you mean "adept at removing his enemies and any constraints on his power", then yes, he was very good
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > initially he was a very good leader When? What did he do that was good? He didn't implement democracy; that would have been good.
- anon989 9y ago
  When was he a good leader? When he was sanctioning the genocide of the Matebele people in 1983?
  - StanislavPetrov 9y ago
    No, when he hyperinflated the currency and bankrupted the country (in the 90s, not the most recent hyperinflation).
- Gustomaximus 9y ago
  I've seen a few comments from 'initially he was a very good leader' followed by some criticism. I didnt know the answer so google wiki and while a lite verison of events it might help people understand things better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe#Prime_Minister_of_Zimbabwe:_1980.E2.80.9387 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe#Prime_Minister_o... Largely to me it seems he started with genuinely 'good intentions' that didn't work out, vs being a 'good leader'. Good to me includes both vision and execution.
  - igitur 9y ago
    It's probably wrong to reduce a person's success to one measure. He obviously had his failures, but his contributions to Zimbabwe's healthcare and education systems are what I remember and is why I called him a good leader early on. Even today, here in neighbouring South Africa, there is a big gap in the average literacy rate of Zimbabwean and a South African. Mugabe totally stuffed up the country later. But credit where credit is due.
anon989 9y ago
He was the prime minister and effectively the leader of Zimbabwe since 1980.

thisisit 9y ago

"While denying that the military had seized power, they said that Mr. Mugabe and his family “are safe and sound, and their security is guaranteed.” “We are only targeting criminals around him who are committing crimes that are causing social and economic suffering in the country in order to bring them to justice," This doesn't look good.

lb1lf 9y ago
According to (whoever controls...) the official Zanu-PF twitter account, Robert Mugabe and his wife has been detained. The former vice president, Mnangagwa (who was sacked by Mugabe last week, so that his wife Grace could take the #2 spot) is acting president, according to an army statement. Also, reports of gun and artillery fire from northern Harare - the district where Mugabe and his cronies live. Also, predictably, the army claims this is not a coup, and that they are merely acting to preserve the constitution and the republic. (That being said, if one is to stage a coup somewhere, one could find a less deserving country than Zimbabwe; let's just hope the army has the good sense to hand over power to civilian authorities ASAP.)
- anon989 9y ago
  That is not their official twitter handle. I wouldn't take what they tweet as an official statement from ZanuPF
- tasssko 9y ago
  I know people that live in northern Harare and they haven't heard any gun and artillery fire. They live within a 3-5km radius of RM and his cronies also they haven't seen any tanks - yet. All very curious, but something is up.
  - gaius 9y ago
    According to Wikipedia, Zimbabwe's army has no serviceable tanks.
Lazare 9y ago
> This doesn't look good. Who for? The situation in Zimbabwe is bad enough that things could hardly get much worse. Worst case, one corrupt dictator gets replaced by a different successor than would otherwise have been the case. It's not like a military junta could be less democratic or more corrupt than the existing regime, after all.

vuyani 9y ago

I wish our neighbors well! its been a long time over due.I really hope it will be a peaceful transition, as SA has their own problems they need to deal with(cANCer)! We cannot have a refugee crisis and a civil war on our borders

NaliSauce 9y ago

Shouldn't he have been removed quite some time ago for violating the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide?

yorwba 9y ago
Removed by whom?
- NaliSauce 9y ago
  I suppose that's one of the UNs weakness in that they lack the ability to enforce a lot of conventions.
  - camus2 9y ago
    And to put whom in power instead of him? It doesn't work.
    - NaliSauce 9y ago
      It's been done before by the UN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodia#Vietnamese_occupation_and_transition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodia#Vietnamese_occupation... TL;DR: Regime in cambodia genocides about 1/4 of its population between 1975-79, is removed from power by Vietnam. UN helps recovery from destruction of society by previous govt & transition to new govt which after some initial chaos stabilizes. It's still not a proper democracy, but at least it isn't genocidal. Considering the extremely difficult circumstances (a genocide so bad that it destabilized society & vietnam being an authoritarian regime), I am actually impressed by what the UN managed to pull off.
  - netsharc 9y ago
    A world government with a force would be an interesting concept. Corrupt African states has lead to their citizens fleeing to Europe with EU solutions being band-aids like giving Libyan coast guard ships and money to prevent the ships from leaving Libyan waters, the better solution would be to fix corruption and help development in the refugees' home countries, but the EU governments can't do that, can they (giving the governments money would just mean the leaders would be able to afford a new villa and a few more Mercedes Benzes).

forapurpose 9y ago

There have been several coups or other undemocratic assumptions of power recently: Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, China (Xi seems to have made himself dictator-for-life), Turkey, and to a degree in Japan, in at least one Eastern European country, and even in France (which AFAIK now has an indefinite state of emergency curtailing rights of citizens). I wonder how much and in what way they are related to the U.S. changing its long-standing policy from being the guarantor of international order, and from being an advocate for democracy as a universal right. Some examples in my list started before the current US policy went into effect, but perhaps the US is accelerating a trend, merely responding to it, or even taking an active hand (during the Cold War the US played an active role in such things, from Congo/Zaire to Chile to Iran to Indonesia to many other places). Perhaps others are taking active hands now that the US is out of the picture (to a significant degree) as guarantor. That trend, away from democracy, is very serious and is the headline here for me. Generations fought, struggled and died to establish the legacy of democracy and human rights that we inherited; what are we building for the next generation? It feels like we are just gambling away the family inheritance.

relyio 9y ago
France has lifted its state of emergency two weeks ago after a new anti-terror law was passed by the government. While I wasn't fond of it, I am not sure it is fair to call it "undemocratic". It was hard to get out of that state of emergency precisely because it was 1/ popular 2/ politically dangerous (what happens if a major scale attack happens right after it is being lifted?).
- forapurpose 9y ago
  Thanks for the update. > I am not sure it is fair to call it "undemocratic". > It was hard to get out of that state of emergency precisely because it was 1/ popular 2/ politically dangerous (what happens if a major scale attack happens right after it is being lifted?). If we define 'democratic' in the literal sense, majority rule, then I agree. But that's mob rule and not what people mean when they talk about democracy. Civil rights - protection of the minority from the majority - are assumed to be essential, and the state of emergency (if I understood correctly) suspended those rights to a degree. Civil rights exist specifically for situations like this one. The way I remember it is the saying: 'Democracy must be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner'.

zimzim 9y ago

background: President is old and have succession problems. In recent years his wife trying to grab more and more power to be the next president but not everyone in the ruling party like that. last week she (from the mouth of the president) fired "number 2" in the country. since then everyone who was "friend" with number 2 was fired too. when they tried to get rid of the army general (friend of number 2) he refused to leave his office in claim that president wife doing undemocratic things. yesterday he did the "takeover". its not yet clear if the president will switched with the number 2 guy (the friend of the general).

anon989 9y ago
>"when they tried to get rid of the army general (friend of number 2) he refused to leave his office" That was never confirmed
- zimzim 9y ago
  Its not the kind of things you can get confirmation. He was called a traitor in official letter yesterday.
  - anon989 9y ago
    He was called a traitor after issuing a statement that was a veiled threat against Mugabe. You are spreading inaccurate information
erikb 9y ago
Really interested to read more about this. This is really the most critical point of the succession question: Who can get the military to follow him. Both the highest general and the government leader have strong claims for military leadership and there is no pure logical answer if highest general and government leader don't agree. All depends on what happens between the different parties.
- Flenser 9y ago
  There's a good summary here: https://www.thezimbabwean.co/2017/11/standoff-zimbabwe-struggle-succeed-mugabe-deepens/ https://www.thezimbabwean.co/2017/11/standoff-zimbabwe-strug... From today: listen to this from around 8:10 (it starts at 6am, so skip to 2:10) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09drjhz http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09drjhz

felipelemos 9y ago

It's good to remember that he is in power since 1980. Calling a dictator as a President doesn't make him one. And this doesn't make the takeover good or bad, btw.

gaius 9y ago

Pre-Mugabe Zimbabwe was known as "the breadbasket of Africa" for the productivity of its farms. Mugabe brought economic collapse and famine, while living a life of luxury and stashing billions overseas. Hopefully whoever comes next will be a better leader.

zimzim 9y ago
It was a different country. how well can ex-slaves and bushman run a country? democracy is not rooted in every culture, greed is :\ EDIT: just to be clear not every person in charge is ex-slave or something, but as a country even if they started financially strong it does not mean they had the culture to support it
- tankenmate 9y ago
  Greed per se is not the problem, it is greed above all else. The number one problem in Zimbabwe is corruption. Only once there is a strong body, be that courts, a corruption commission, or similar, that has the power to hold those in power to account then little will change. Zimbabwe badly need an effective rule of law that provides justice to all.
- TausAmmer 9y ago
  Where there is leader(governing group/body/system), there is power trip, have not seen otherwise. There will never be something different.
- pjc50 9y ago
  Ah, colonialism. Construct a system designed to prevent people from having autonomy or self-governance while shipping their value overseas, then smear them as primitives when they take over and have difficulty with autonomy.
danmaz74 9y ago
Let's hope so, but this looks more like an internal power struggle from the existing regime, so I don't expect any of the two factions to want real change (except about who gets the power and billions).

i_feel_great 9y ago

These African countries always remind me of Darwin's Nightmare[0]. There is an interview with Raphael at 1:20:41 in which he says he wants a war because he can earn more money then. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcnTWAyzhbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcnTWAyzhbg

WillReplyfFood 9y ago

A new strong man will appear. He will talk about a fresh start, a new aera, the press will celebrate him, his followers will demand part of the loot- transparency iternational celebrates his existance, the cycle goes on and on.