As Robert Mugabe slept, elite plotters carried out a coup

Inside the elite coup that toppled Robert Mugabe’s tyrannical rule.

People remove the portrait of former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabefrom from the wall at the International Conference centre, after his resignation. Picture Jekesai Njikizana/ AFP.

Robert Mugabe woke in his luxurious palace known as “Blue Roof” on ­Wednesday last week to find that his head of security wasn’t there for the usual morning briefing. Only then did the 93-year-old president, the survivor of many challenges across 37 years of ­tumultuous and widely criticised rule, realise he was under house ­arrest.

No one had awakened Mugabe during the night, according to senior security officials, as Zimbabwe’s military deployed tanks and troops around the capital, seizing government buildings and strategic intersections in response to a widening purge by the president that was reaching the armed forces. The leader once hailed as “the lion of Africa”, and by then widely derided as “the old man”, was a prisoner in his own home.

What followed was a week of drama and uncertainty that included mass demonstrations, a presidential speech that confounded listeners, a resignation deadline set by Mugabe’s own party, expulsion from that party and a parliamentary move to impeach — all finally clarified early yesterday: the world’s oldest head of state resigned.

The announcement by the Speaker of parliament sent cheering crowds into the streets of the capital and cities across the country, where on Saturday hundreds of thousands, anticipating the end of the Mugabe era, had marched in their first free demonstrations in decades. Crowds danced and car horns honked in a cacophonous chorus outside the cream-coloured parliament building in central Harare. Inside, officials began removing Mugabe’s stern-faced official portraits from the walls.

“This is historic,” says Tinashe Ndoro, a 23-year-old who has never found a permanent job in Zimbabwe’s crisis-addled economy. “Mugabe was feared, not loved.”

Among the marchers, the resignation was largely seen as a victory for the people of Zimbabwe — an expression of their collective will. Fresh details of the president’s final weeks in office, however, support a different narrative: that his ouster resulted from a struggle between elites. The move against Mugabe was planned and executed by an army that met little resistance from the security appar­atuses that had protected Mugabe for decades, interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with how the operation unfolded show.

By the time Mugabe woke on Wednesday last week, his marble-inlaid, Greek-columned presidential palace had become a jail guarded by soldiers and a camouflage T72 tank dispatched during the night from Inkomo army base.

Mugabe’s fall ended a reign during which his status deterior­ated from revered liberation fighter to international pariah. Known as Comrade Bob, the former schoolteacher oversaw a series of catastrophic economic overhauls that turned Zimbabwe, a resource-rich former British colony, from Africa’s breadbasket into a desperate recipient of food aid and triggered inflation of historic proportions.

Car horns blared and cheering crowds raced through the streets of the Zimbabwean capital Harare as news spread that President Robert Mugabe, 93, had resigned after 37 years in power. Picture: Marco Longari/ AFP.

Once hailed as an inclusive leader, cultivating ties to the West and goodwill with the country’s white minority, he went on to see millions of the country’s best-educated flee. White farmers left as the government took their land and gave it to Mugabe allies, in a chaotic process that triggered Western sanctions in 2003. As sanctions squeezed, Mugabe grew virulently anti-West and bolstered relations with governments in China, Iran and Venezuela.

Successive Western governments criticised Mugabe over human rights violations and his governance. He was one of a small group of international leaders personally targeted by US sanctions. Even so, the US has been Zimbabwe’s largest provider of development and humanitarian assis­tance, according to the State Department. The US plans to give Zimbabwe $US147 million ($194m) in aid next year, much of it aimed at HIV-AIDS prevention, according to US government ­figures.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has urged leaders in Harare to ­“implement much-needed political and economic reforms for a more stable and promising future for the Zimbabwean people. Whatever short-term arrangements the government may establish, the path forward must lead to free and fair elections.”

Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says Mugabe was a ­tyrant who used fear and violence to maintain brutal rule over the Zimbabwean people over decades.

“President Mugabe promised so much as an independence leader, but he badly let down the ­people of Zimbabwe in a most tragic way. He’s now at last lost the support of ZANU-PF, his party, and the Zimbabwean people at last have the chance to rebuild a better society,” she told ABC radio.

The later years of Mugabe’s rule were marred by increasingly bizarre spectacles. The aged leader delivered rambling speeches and fell asleep in public. His wife and children flaunted their wealth, posting images of sports cars, yachts and jewellery bought on shopping trips to Dubai, Paris and Singapore.

As other African liberation fighters such as Nelson Mandela and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah took power and then eventually relinquished it, Mugabe clung on. Last year he vowed to run in 2018 presidential elections, where a victory would have left him governing just a year shy of his 100th birthday.

For decades Mugabe refused to nominate an heir, selectively repressing camps that grew too strong. But in recent months, with the president ailing, the succession struggle reached a new intensity that ultimately would herald his downfall.

On November 6, Mugabe purged vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, a 75-year-old politician whose sometimes ruthless manoeuvring had earned him the nickname The Crocodile. Fearing arrest, Mnangagwa fled with his son, first to Mozambique, then South Africa, to plot his next move. The firing of the vice-president elevated Mugabe’s wife, Grace, into the line of succession. Mnangagwa had deep ties to the military. And soon Mugabe’s purge threatened to reach the army as well.

By Saturday, November 11, soldiers of the mechanised brigade at the barracks of Inkomo, 56km outside Harare, knew a plan was afoot. Its target was an officer named Constantino Chiwenga, a one-time protege of Mugabe.

Zimbabwe's Commander Defence Forces General Constatntino Guveya Chiwenga. Picture: Jekesai Njikizana.

More than three decades ago, Chiwenga was a young army ­officer who tried to kill himself after botching his military exams. Mugabe summoned the soldier and made him an offer: Pledge eternal loyalty in return for ­promotion, privilege and power.

By now, Chiwenga was a ­general, the head of Zimbabwe’s defence forces. He was also an ally of the vice-president Mugabe had fired. As Chiwenga ­prepared to return from a trip to China, police loyal to Mugabe ­positioned themselves at the ­Harare airport to arrest him, in events described by senior security officials.

But the army had been tipped off and its commandos were also deployed there — disguised as airport workers. As the plane landed, the soldiers shed their airport-worker uniforms to reveal army fatigues and weapons. The police fled, and Chiwenga was escorted to his army base. The ambush had been foiled.

Mugabe, having spent the day at his 25-bedroom mansion, made no statement. He was preparing for a busy week managing the backlash from promoting his wife into the line of succession.

The next day, Chiwenga held a news conference to say the army wouldn’t stand by and watch Mugabe’s continuing purge. “The military will not hesitate to step in,” he said.

At that point, allies of Mnangagwa were meeting aides of South African President Jacob Zuma in Cape Town to inform them of the Zimbabwean military’s plan.

Christopher Mutsvangwa, head of the Zimbabwean veterans association that once underpinned Mugabe’s power, says he laid out the plan for military intervention. A spokesman for Zuma says the South African presidency was unaware of the interactions described by Mutsvangwa.

At Inkomo army base, soldiers were on high alert. As they ate a late lunch on Tuesday, November 14, with news headlines showing on TV, one item grabbed their attention: Kudzanayi Chipanga, secretary of the ruling ZANU-PF party’s Youth League and an ally of Grace Mugabe’s faction, was ­denouncing the military. “The guns will follow the politics and not the politics the guns,” he said.

A time line for Zimbabwe

Within the hour, soldiers set out to prove him wrong. Dozens of T69 and T72 tanks and armoured vehicles rumbled out of the ­barracks. Halfway to the capital, on a road flanked by train tracks and fields, the tanks halted, awaiting orders.

In the city centre, Robert Mugabe was meeting his cabinet. Advisers informed him of reports of tank movements, but he brushed them aside and about 6pm returned to Blue Roof.

Unknown to him, the presidential guards who patrol the palace were already collaborating with the rebellion. The guards ­welcomed his motorcade through the checkpoint, then sealed it and waited for reinforcements. Once home, Mugabe went promptly to bed.

At about 9.30pm that Tuesday one week ago, army officers received orders to deploy into the city centre and arrest top members of Grace Mugabe’s faction, which is known as the G-40, or Generation 40, because most members are relatively youthful.

Tanks and commandos headed for the home of Chipanga, the youth leader who had angered them that afternoon. Tipped off, he fled with his wife from their luxurious home to the police station in the leafy Borrowdale suburb. Army commandos advanced on the station, bundled Chipanga into the boot of a car and drove him to an army base in the city called King George VI. Last Thursday evening, his face swollen, he appeared on state television to ask Chiwenga for forgiveness for his remarks.

Mugabe’s head of security, ­Albert Ngulube, went to the presidential guards’ base armed with a sniper’s rifle to see what was ­happening. He was detained and, according to one person in the ­security service, “beaten to within an inch of his life”.

The army rapidly seized ­government buildings and ­strategic intersections in central Harare. Troops took control of state television. At 4am on Wednesday, November 15, a general, Sibusiso Moyo, announced on television the army was in control and would purge “criminals” around the president.

Zimbabweans thronged the streets to celebrate what seemed to be the impending end of Mugabe’s rule. But on Sunday, in a televised address at which he was widely ­expected to formalise his exit, ­Mugabe stunned the nation by­ ­accepting the military’s intervention but saying nothing about quitting.

“I as the president of Zimbabwe and as their commander in chief do acknowledge the issues they have drawn my attention to,” ­Mugabe said in a rambling speech. “You and I have work to do. Goodnight.”

Seated to his right, wearing ­fatigues and holding a copy of the speech, was a stony-faced Chiwenga.

Monday dawned with a deadline for the president’s resignation, set by the party, approaching. When it passed, Zimbabwe’s parliament followed through with a threat to begin impeachment proceedings. Sacked vice-president Mnangagwa, in his first public comments since he fled to South Africa 2½ weeks ago, vowed on Tuesday to return soon to ­Zimbabwe. Then, extending the mystery, the military gave hints it was in discussions with the long-serving president.

On Tuesday morning, the parliamentary Speaker’s announcement finally ended the drama, and Mugabe’s long presidential reign.

Mugabe’s letter, read aloud by the Speaker, didn’t name a successor but said that a new president should be appointed by Wednesday. The ruling ZANU-PF is set to tap Mnangagwa, who must now navigate a potentially rocky transition in the middle of an accelerating economic emergency.

But in Harare on Tuesday night, the mood was of jubilant catharsis. “This is the best, this is the best,” said Emmanuel Tembo, a 51-year-old hotel security guard. “We are tired of him! Thirty-seven years!”

The Wall Street Journal

Additional Reporting: Bernard Mpofu