statista: Most Coup Attempts In Recent Years Have Failed

In July 2016, a faction of the Turkish armed forces attempted to carry out a coup d'état against state institutions and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the country's president. Like the majority of coup attempts in recent years, it ended in failure, though it remains one of the highest-profile incidents in recent memory. Some notable coups did succeed over the past decade including Egypt in 2011 (and again in 2013) as well as Mali and Guinea-Bissau in 2012.

This month's coup in Zimbabwe joins the success list. It all started on 14 November when elements of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces sized control of key areas in the country's capital of Harare. By 19 November, ZANU-PF removed President Robert Mugabe as the country's leader, replacing him with Emmerson Mnangagwa. Impeachment proceedings were initiated when Mugabe failed to resign the presidency by a 20 November deadline. After a joint session of Parliament and Senate to discuss his impeachment on 21 November, Mugabe sent a letter of resignation before Mnangagwa was sworn in as president three days later.

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Jacobin Magazine: Goodbye and Good Riddance, Robert Mugabe

As a young politician in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mugabe was by no means the most prominent of the black nationalists fighting white colonial rule. Neither was he the most motivated. He was, however, the most eloquent. For a clique of educated black elites, whose political and societal outlook was fashioned in mission schools, Mugabe was the man of choice to convey the message to white rulers — in voice and comportment — that blacks were no longer “uncivilized tribesmen.” They were sophisticated enough to deserve the franchise. [...]

At the time, Mugabe had come back home, presumably for the holidays, from Ghana, where he worked as a teacher, with the intention to go back to West Africa. He may never have wanted to stay in Rhodesia for long. He became the reluctant latecomer who would go on to dominate Zimbabwean politics for almost half a century. [...]

He was a rebel, but one who wanted to replace white rulers with a self-interested political project. When he “talked revolution,” it was out of expediency, to further his goal of securing the presidency for life. When he donned revolutionary garb, it was always fleetingly (in the early 1980s, for picture poses), and with an unseemly addition: a tie that clashed with his safari suit.  [...]

It is easy to point to the social programs during the independence euphoria of the 1980s as an example of Mugabe’s commitment to black people and socialism. But throughout the 1980s, and with “Britain’s willful blindness,” Mugabe sought to build a one-party dictatorship in the mold of the Kims’ North Korea. In fact, he invited North Korean military supervisors to help him create a private army brigade that hounded the opposition and committed one of the worst atrocities against African people in independent Africa. In the end, the Gukurahundi massacres left an estimated twenty thousand civilians, most of them isiNdebele-speaking black men, women, and children, dead in unmarked mass graves.

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The Atlantic: Mugabe's Time Runs Out

If Mugabe's 37 years in power seemed interminable, it was partly because of the longstanding geopolitical movements he outlasted. To put his tenure in perspective, consider this: He withstood the end of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as its not-so-cold manifestations in Africa, where each superpower supported a litany of armed groups and dictators; he also outlasted the USSR itself. White-minority rule in southern Africa, which was so entrenched as to seem permanent before Mugabe took power, is now the stuff of history books, even if Africa and its people are still dealing with the economic and social consequences of its legacy. He is the world's third-longest-serving non-royal leader; only Cameroon's Paul Biya, who has governed since 1975, and Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the leader of Equatorial Guinea who came to power in 1979, have ruled longer. Mugabe also outlasted many of his own political rivals, as well as figures seen as possible successors, and in the process turned his country into an economic basket case. [...]

Although Mugabe seemed emblematic in the West of a kind of “big man” rule in African politics, the truth was that by the time his reign came to an end he was increasingly the exception rather than the rule. The continent has for years been moving away from the kind of politics where a single autocratic leader, often supported by the United States or, before its collapse, the Soviet Union, dominated a nation for decades. One reason for Mugabe’s longevity could be the fact that relative to other African countries, Zimbabwe shed white-minority rule only in 1980, decades after the wave of decolonization swept the rest of Africa. Racist rule is a recent memory in the country, and Mugabe, despite his obvious faults, represented the successful fight against it. [...]

Morley told me that Mugabe started off well enough when in the 1980s, but once he got his hands on the nation’s most valuable export—diamonds—he, like leaders in other resource-rich nations, came to believe that he had a right to the means of production. “People maybe could have put up with it from Mugabe himself,” she said, “but Grace [Mugabe] and her appalling shopping habits was what finally sent people over the edge.”     

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Haaretz: Is Zimbabwe's Coup Part of China's Grab for Africa?

Indeed, a few days before the coup, General Chiwenga, head of the Zimbabwe Defense Forces (ZDF) arrived in Beijing to meet two of China's most powerful men - Gen Li Zuocheng, chief of the joint staff of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and China’s defense minister, Gen Chang Wanquan. [...]

China is Zimbabwe's largest investor and trading partner and has invested heavily in the country's mineral resources, particularly the diamond mining industry. In 2016, Harare enforced an indigenization law that sought to reduce foreign ownership of Zimbabwean businesses - leaving many Chinese investors concerned. [...]

"Mugabe is out, Mnangagwa is in. He got his revenge. It's an internal power struggle. We will celebrate today, repent tomorrow. And China will continue to control us, remotely." 

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The Atlantic: The Meaning of Robert Mugabe's Stunning Non-Resignation

The immediate issue of concern is what shape the political transition takes. Unfortunately, the most likely outcome is a military junta that retains only a fig leaf of legitimacy. The various opposition groups, especially the party of former labor leader Morgan Tsvangirai, would be wise to avoid a coalition trap again. A notional government of national unity, with Tsvangirai as prime minister, presided over the country from 2009 to 2013 after a disputed election that Mugabe lost. During that time, Mugabe and his cronies in ZANU-PF kept firm control and merely consolidated their political power. This culminated in a July 2013 election in which the opposition was thoroughly routed. [...]

Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s likely successor, was a longtime security chief and the prime architect of a massacre of at least 20,000 civilians in the 1980s. General Constantino Chiwenga, the organizer of the coup, launched a vicious campaign of violence against Tsvangirai’s supporters and civic leaders in 2008, which killed hundreds and left tens of thousands homeless. Both men are also part of ZANU-PF’s vast, corrupt business empire. The party meeting to expel Mugabe, for instance, was chaired by Obert Mpofu, a Mnangagwa ally who oversaw the nation’s diamond mines at a time when billions of dollars of revenue went missing, never making it into government coffers. Meanwhile, Mpofu and other ZANU-PF bigwigs live in extravagant mansions and own fleets of luxury cars. [...]

The United States will be even more relevant for Zimbabwe’s economic revival. Over half of Zimbabwe’s rural population relies on outside food assistance, a stunning statistic for a country that was once a net food exporter. The average Zimbabwean is poorer today than in 1980; by some estimates, unemployment is at 95 percent. The country is desperate for cash to jumpstart its once productive farms and factories. Although Mnangagwa and his political allies have long-standing ties to China, the road to recovery inevitably runs through Washington—the country is more than $9 billion in debt to western institutions, including the World Bank. A bailout plan proposed two years ago received British backing, but the United States blocked any financial support to the abusive Mugabe regime. The Americans will now need to be convinced that commitment to reform is real before agreeing to any restructuring or new loans to Zimbabwe. Importantly, too, Mnangagwa and Chiwenga are still under U.S. Treasury sanctions due to their involvement in widespread human rights abuses.

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Vox: The military coup in Zimbabwe, explained

On November 14th 2017, Zimbabwe military troops drove tanks into the capital city, Harare. They patrolled the streets, blocked access to government buildings, and took over the state television station to insist…. This is not a military takeover of government.

Once praised as a war hero, Robert Mugabe helped Zimbabwe win independence from Great Britain in 1980. He became president under Zimbabwe’s new constitution with the support of the people. But soon, he digressed into a repressive dictator. He secured his power through aggression and threats, there have been reports of state-sponsored torture and killings. And even though Zimbabwe is technically a democracy, there’s evidence Mugabe rigged elections in his favor.

Now that Mugabe is 93 years old, and reportedly in poor health, the fight for political influence is more important than ever. And it’s caused a split in Mugabe’s own party, the ZANU-PF. On one side we have the old guard lead by Mugabe’s sacked vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa. Like Mugabe, he fought for Zimbabwe’s independence and has a checkered past that includes human rights abuses against political opponents and ethnic minorities. 

Slate: What Is Going to Happen to Zimbabwe Now?

Michelle Faul: It came as a shock. It came as a shock to everybody, even though I was home for three weeks last month, and everyone was saying, “Something’s got to happen. It cannot continue. People are suffering so much.” People are starving in my country. It’s disgraceful. Mugabe inherited, when we finally got independent black rule in 1980, a country that was self-sufficient. Five thousand white farmers, whatever their politics—and I am black—produced enough food to feed more than 8 million people, and food for export. And he has reduced our nation to one in which one-third of the people need food aid. Another third of the nation has left. We are scattered all over the world. [...]

I said Emmerson Mnangagwa is evil because he is considered the mastermind or what we called, or Mugabe called, Gukurahundi. This means the cleaning of the chaff—when you have wheat and clean it. That was a project to try and wipe out the minority Ndebele people. Nobody knows how many people were killed between 1984 and about 1988. I had to leave the country. I was forced to leave my country as a result of my reporting on Gukurahundi. Perhaps 20,000, perhaps 30,000 people were killed, and Emmerson Mnangagwa is considered the mastermind of those killings. [...]

I think Mnangagwa realizes that for the country to have any kind of positive future it can’t continue in the way it has been ruled. Mnangagwa has indicated that he would be willing to allow white farmers to return to Zimbabwe and farm the land. What happened with that project was that Mugabe accused the white farmers of supporting the opposition MDC party, which we believe has won at least two out of three of the last elections. He said the white farmers were supporting his opponents, which is when he began his program of violently forcing them from the land. The real reason, we think, was that his moneybags—an Indian chap who had done all his laundering of money for him—had taken off with all the veterans’ pension money. Mugabe no longer had money to pay veterans; the veterans were getting angry. So instead he said, “I will give you land. You can go take the farms.” [...]

I would suspect that they will be allowed to retire in disgrace. What I would like to see is someone like Mugabe being sent to the International Criminal Court to face trial for all the killings that occurred and other human rights abuses. Nobody knows how many people have died because of Mugabe’s destruction of everything he built up. He built up a fabulous education system. He was a teacher. He then destroyed it.

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