Mugabe steps down after military coup in Zimbabwe
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12 SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 2017 On Nov. 14, the Zimbabwe Defense Forces took control of the capital city, Harare. A week later, Robert Mugabe— the only leader Zimbabwe has had since independence in 1980—resigned. On the 24th, Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s former right-hand man and until Nov. 6 the vice president, became the new president.
The coup was brewing for months. The military blocked the rise of Grace Mugabe, Robert’s second wife, who placed herself at the head of the G-40 fac tion in the ruling ZANU-PF party. Based on the youth wing and masterminded by education minister Jonathan Moyo, G-40 looked to move away from the tradition al base, veterans of the liberation war of the 1970s.
Mnangagwa served as Mugabe’s enforc er and the head of ZANU-PF’s business empire. He is called “Crocodile” for his ruthlessness and his faction, “Lacoste,” is well represented in the officer corps and ZANU-PF’s old guard. His removal came while General Constantino Chiwenga, head of the ZDF, was on a planned visit to China. The exiled vice president, who had been trained in Beijing and Nan jing during the 1960s, joined him there. When the general returned, forces loyal to Mugabe failed to arrest him, and the coup went ahead.
Although unpopular, Grace Mugabe worked to build her legend within the cult of personality around her husband. Her followers called her “Amai” (Mother) and tried to turn a woman called “Gucci Grace” for her extravagant spending into a saintly figure. The armed forces never accepted her role and moved to keep her out of power.
Robert Mugabe’s fall was greeted with jubilation from a country desperate for change. But Mnangagwa takes power in a deep economic crisis. The vast ma jority of Zimbabweans work in the informal sector, performing services or selling goods from South Af rica at a high markup. He is expected to look to China and Russia for material backing and make amends with the West.
The liberation struggle and its aftermath Robert Mugabe came to power in 1980 after a de cade of war. African nationalists fought the apartheid state of Rhodesia—led by Ian Smith on behalf of a tiny white settler population. Mugabe led the Chinabacked ZANU-PF, which conducted most of the armed struggle. Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU, backed by the USSR, held out for reconciliation. The British, once coloniz ers, brokered the peace and ensured that the new government would not expropriate white farmers for a decade. ZANU-PF won overwhelming support in the new Zimbabwe.
Mugabe charmed the whites and the British and appeared to be an ideal partner. He worked with in ternational lenders such as the IMF and World Bank, and followed their advice. This meant shifting away from industrialization and toward cash crop farming. But at the same time he lashed out at his African ri vals. An uprising of a few hundred die-hards was the pretext to attack the Ndebele minority who were the base of ZAPU support. From 1983 to 1987 the Fifth Brigade, trained by North Koreans, engaged in a cam paign of repression known as the Gukurahundi that killed thousands of civilians. Its scars remain fresh to this day.
In the 1990s, the IMF and World Bank forced a re form package known as ESAP (scornfully nicknamed “Economic Suffering for African People”) on Zimba bwe. At first Mugabe was a model student of auster ity, even as it destroyed his nation’s industrial base and made it a net importer of food.
Sharp class struggle led by the Zimbabwe Confeder ation of Trade Unions (ZCTU) erupted between 1996 and 1998, with mass stayaways shaking the econo my. It was war veterans, protesting against rampant corruption in the fund for wounded soldiers, who forced Mugabe’s hand. He borrowed heavily to cre ate new pensions for veterans and made them a base of support.
At the same time, Mugabe led a deeply unpopular war effort, sending troops to back Laurent Kabila in the Congo. A number of deaths caused a major em barrassment, and Mugabe’s armed forces attacked the journalists who exposed them. The war put Zim babwe further in debt but Mugabe and his circle gained lucrative mining holdings in the Congo.
In 2000, Morgan Tsvangirai of the ZCTU led the for mation of a new opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). It was an overly broad union of businessmen, church leaders, trade union ists, and social activists. MDC retreated from the class struggle of the 1990s while Mugabe moved left. Af ter losing a bid for a new constitution with expanded powers, he began a campaign of land reform, taking over most of the white-owned farms. In the short term this benefited ZANU-PF members and devas tated the cash crop exports, deepening the economic crisis. As time has passed, Black tobacco farmers have formed a new middle class.
Mugabe also passed an indigenization law requiring all businesses to be 51% Black owned. This alienated friendly countries such as China, which had lucrative diamond mining interests. Soon afterward, Zimba bwe began to default on its debts and moved into a period of hyperinflation that would climax in 2008, when the government printed worthless $100 trillion bills.
Rise and fall of the opposition In 2002, Mugabe won re-election in a rigged vote, and the MDC continued to grow in popularity. Tsvan Malawi24.com girai had a clear lead in the first round of voting in 2008. Forces loyal to Mugabe, organized in part by now-President Mnangagwa, went on a campaign of terror and violence against MDC supporters. Tsvan girai stepped out of the race, allowing Mugabe to win with no opposition.
South African President Thabo Mbeki brokered an accord between ZANU-PF and MDC that led to a united government. In the power-sharing regime, the MDC proved little better than ZANU-PF. Its ministers gave themselves and party leaders large bonuses and luxury cars while most of Zimbabwe struggled to get by. By the 2013 elections, the MDC’s support had col lapsed and ZANU-PF was the beneficiary.
Today the opposition is splintered. Tsvangirai, who is stricken with colon cancer, remains its face. For mer finance minister Tendai Biti—who told workers that money doesn’t grow on trees while handing out $15,000 bonuses—leads the People’s Democratic Party, an MDC splinter. An older splinter, MDC-N, is led by Welshman Ncube.
Joice Mujuru, a war hero known for shooting down a Rhodesian helicopter, leads the National People’s Party. Mujuru was vice president and considered Mugabe’s heir until Grace Mugabe engineered her ouster in 2014. None of the opposition has clean hands, and the MDC was revealed in the Wikileaks cables of 2011 to have Western backing. The crisis faced today Zimbabwe is desperately poor; 74% of people live on less than $5.50 per day. Goods are exchanged on such a petty level that people buy a teaspoon of sugar or a squeeze of toothpaste from street hawkers. It uses the U.S. dollar as its currency and is strapped for cash. Some 70 percent of Zimbabweans do not have bank accounts, and have to pay 30% fees for cash from mobile pay services. Bond notes—IOUs for dollars—are likewise devalued by about 20-30% by money changers.
In 2016 the IMF called for an “internal devalua (continued on page 11, in “Trudeau’s defective apology to LGBT people”)