By Ngoni Shumba.
HARARE, Zimbabwe. (News Of The South) – A crushed economy. Insolvent government. Runaway corruption. A distracted ruling elite locked in cut-throat political squabbling. Put simply, Robert Mugabe’s administration is a crumbling Tower of Babel.
In many other places in Africa, the country could long been staring at a military coup.
But then, albeit silently, Zimbabwe could be in the midst of one – a tacit soft coup in favour of Mugabe’s scheming lieutenant, Emmerson Mnangagwa.
Without a succession plan to the increasingly frail 92-year-old Mugabe in his Zanu PF party the military which has been integral in Mugabe’s iron rule since independence in 1980 has been watching political developments with keen interest.
And have made their choice.
In 2014, they cunningly pushed out former Vice President Joyce Mujuru by manipulating their intelligence briefs to Mugabe.
Mujuru recently confessed that she was publicly accused of plotting to assassinate the nonagenarian before she was pushed out because Mugabe was relying on intelligence files from the military intelligence.
This gave space in the presidium for Mnangagwa, a canny, determined, corrupt, and ruthless but patient leader who besides Mugabe has the respect of the country’s state security chiefs.
Mnangagwa has been in Mugabe’s shadows for over 50 years and is sly and shadowy character and ruthlessness has earned him the moniker – the crocodile.
Though feared by political opponents, he is considered by foreign diplomats to be the only local politician capable of maintaining stability and returning the country to international respectability.
Mnangagwa although one of two deputies, appears well set to take over from Mugabe with the aid of the military as he chairs the joint operations command.
Although the military appears to be taking the lead with him in the background many consider him to be directing proceeding from the background.
He is widely viewed as leader of an aggressive faction of hardliners in Mugabe’s party that has control of state security apparatus.
The faction, according to retired Brigadier-General and military historian, Dr. Martin Rupiya, in a preface to a research in the role of the military in the country’s politics: The Military Factor in Zimbabwe, is not afraid to ‘kill, maim and torture political opponents’.
The military, he observes, is just a pawn in the hand of this faction.
A cursory analysis of the role of the military in the country’s electoral process almost lays bare its ability to determine who leads the country.
There are at least two historical periods, over the last 30 years, during which evidence of the aggressive faction’s willingness to destroy political opponents had registered itself, only to be quickly reigned in, Dr Rupiya notes.
The first period being against Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU. The period, from the early 1980s until 1988, witnessed a highly partisan Zimbabwe People’s Militia (ZPM), the Korean trained 5th Brigade and the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) all with a command and control chain of the emerging and integrating conventional Zimbabwe National Army ravaged western Ndebele dominated regions in what was later referred to as Gukurahundi massacres where more than 20 000 people including women and children were murdered.
Mugabe only later described the period as a “moment of madness”.
The second period came post 2000 according to Retired Brigadier General Rupiya.
This was made particularly brazen on January 9, 2002 when service chiefs, led by the late Chief of Defence Staff Lieutenant General Vitalis Zvinavashe, in a televised address pledged exclusive allegiance to President Mugabe and Zanu PF.
The violence that accompanied elections ever since have always been described as systematic and having a professional hand controlling them.
In May 2008, Army Chief of Staff Major-General Martin Chedondo reiterated that position at an army shooting championship in Harare that “the Constitution says the country should be protected by voting and in the 27 June presidential election run-off, pitting our Defence Chief Cde Robert Mugabe, and Morgan Tsvangirai of the MDC-T, we should, therefore, stand behind our Commander-in-Chief.”
Major-General Chedondo added that soldiers were not apolitical as they were not mercenaries but had signed and agreed to protect Zanu PF’s principles. “If you have other thoughts, then you should remove that uniform,” he said.
Addressing a rally in Masvingo in the same month Major-General Engelbert Rugeje said: “This country came through the bullet, not the pencil. Therefore, it will not go by your x of the pencil…The next time I will come next week to Jerera, the helicopter will be full of bullets. You know what you did.”
But the role of the military in influencing the electoral process has not always been violent.
There has been a strategic deployment of the military in key areas of government, entrenching the faction’s influence in nearly everything including facilitating electoral victories.
By November 2010, press reports revealed that Air Vice-Marshal Henry Muchena from the Air Force of Zimbabwe was sent to the ZANU PF headquarters in Harare and assigned to lead a team of 300 army officers deployed around the country to help Mugabe’s party rebuild its collapsed structures. Assisting him was Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) Internal Director Sydney Nyanhongo.
Lovemore Chipunza Sekeramayi, the current Chief Elections Officer in the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission is a former CIO and two directors under him, Utoile Silaigwana (Operations) and Notayi Mutemasango (Administration and Finance), are former soldiers. Silaigwana is responsible for polling, training, election logistics, voter education and public relations.
Sobuza Gula-Ndebele, a former colonel in the army, was in 2002 presidential election the chairperson of the Electoral Supervisory Commission. Gula-Ndebele was later appointed Attorney-General, a position he held until 2008 when he was fired over an embarrassing corruption allegation.
Former permanent secretary in the defence ministry, Job Wabira, who in 1998 disregarded High Court rulings to release Standard newspaper journalists, Ray Choto and the late Mark Chavhunduka, who had been arrested and tortured by the military, for writing a story about an alleged coup attempt was part of the 2004 Delimitation Commission, led by Justice George Chiweshe, himself a retired Brigadier General.
Justice Chiweshe, who in May 2011, was unilaterally appointed by Mugabe as High Court Judge President, is also the former chairperson of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission infamous for withholding the March 2008 election results for a month amid claims that the figures were being massaged to force a presidential run-off, which Tsvangirai was forced to boycott due to violence.
But as Chiweshe held on to the results, Higher and Tertiary Education Minister in Mugabe’s cabinet, Jonathan Moyo, who had then only quit the party just before the elections said security chiefs, with bidding from the faction, usurped total operational control of Zanu PF’s political strategy, the country’s electoral mechanisms and internal security measures shifting power from Mugabe, whom he then called “a hostage president.”
Brigadier General Douglas Nyikayaramba, Mnangagwa’s most vocal military backer, also stands accused of helping rig elections for Mugabe, especially the 2002 presidential elections when he was the Chief Executive Officer of the then Electoral Supervisory Commission.
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission’s secretariat is loaded to the brim with military personnel which its chairperson Justice Rita Makarau admits but says is powerless to act on as they all have contracts.
Only recently Mnangagwa’s position in the presidium under severe threat with even Mugabe’s wife publicly laying into him at her meet the people rallies, a platform she used to whip public anger against Mujuru, the military leapt to his defence.
The rallies were summarily stopped when the military told Mugabe that they were now a threat to state security as soon as she started pointing fingers at Mnangagwa.
Zimbabwe’s military boss General Constantine Chiwenga even dressed down a cabinet minister who had called for Mnangagwa’s ouster as she accused him of leading a parallel government.
Mugabe and his wife now appear to have accepted the military bidding for Mnangagwa’s future in leadership as they recently publicly backed him vowing to deal with everyone who was plotting against him.
And against Mnangagwa, under current laws and electoral staff, there is little hope for the opposition in any election.
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