The New York Review of Books - 07.11.2019

November 7, 2019 25

his paramilitary police to arrest Con-
stantino Chiwenga, the commander
in chief of the armed forces, upon his
return from a state visit to China. Chi-
wenga’s allies got wind of the plot and
deployed elite troops disguised as avia-
tion ground services personnel at the
airport. On November 12 the troops
pulled their weapons at the moment
that the paramilitaries attempted to
detain the general, and disarmed them.
The foiled arrest turned the country’s
most powerful military leaders against
Mugabe and prompted defections
throughout the officer corps. Still,
the secret dialogue carried out by the
Northgate Declaration group arguably
made it easier for many military men
and other security officers to switch
sides. Two nights later, on November
14, the military launched Operation
Restore Legacy, detaining top mem-
bers of the G40 faction and placing the
Mugabes under house arrest.
The Johannesburg alliance also
proved essential in making the Mugabes’
ouster—essentially a military coup—
palatable to the international commu-
nity. As Mugabe dithered, refusing to
step down, it mobilized a broad coali-
tion of war veterans, MDC activists,
business and religious leaders, and
ordinary citizens to march against
him through the streets of Harare.
Mutsvangwa gained tentative support
for Mugabe’s removal from the African
Union and the South African govern-
ment. Pressure mounted on the ZANU-
PF provincial committees to renounce
Mugabe, Parliament moved to impeach
him, and he finally resigned on Novem-
ber 21, two weeks after Mnangagwa’s
flight.

In the euphoric days that followed
Mugabe’s fall, Mnangagwa promised
government transparency, an end to
corruption, and the return of foreign
investment. He removed the road-
blocks that had sprung up during the
last two years of Mugabe’s misrule,
manned by policemen owed months of
back wages who had cited drivers for
fake violations and shaken them down
for bribes. Mnangagwa’s wife made a
visit under an assumed name to Hara-
re’s worst public hospital with a video
camera secretly in tow and exposed the
hours-long waits, rudeness, and other
abuses that ordinary Zimbabweans
experienced while seeking health care.
Mnangagwa even talked of establish-
ing a truth and reconciliation com-
mission to look into some of Mugabe’s
more egregious abuses—including Op-
eration Gukurahundi, the politically
motivated massacres in Matabeleland
in which the Crocodile himself had
participated.
Yet doubts surfaced from the earliest
days of the new regime about the sin-
cerity of Mnangagwa’s commitment to
reform. He appointed a cabinet filled
with ZANU-PF hard-liners, including
the two military men who, according
to Coltart and other MDC leaders, had
stood with him and Mugabe in the Ma-
tabeleland ethnic massacres and the
stealing of the presidential election a

quarter of a century later: Constantino

Chiwenga became vice- president, and

Penence Shiri was named the minister

of lands. On July 30, 2018, Zimbabwe

conducted, for the first time since in-

dependence, a presidential election

without Robert Mugabe on the bal-

lot. Mnangagwa welcomed interna-

tional observers, but they cited a list of

abuses: voter intimidation, distribution

of food aid only to ZANU-PF loyalists,

lack of media coverage for the oppo-

sition. Mnangagwa defeated Nelson

Chamisa, his forty- year-old opponent

from the resurgent MDC, with 50.8

percent of the vote, narrowly avoiding

a runoff; ZANU-PF won nearly two

thirds of the seats in Parliament. On

August 1, troops opened fire on MDC

supporters in Harare who were protest-

ing the slow vote count, killing seven

people and wounding dozens; the next

day, police raided MDC headquarters,

arresting twenty- seven people and seiz-

ing computers.

Since then, Mnangagwa’s blunder-

ing economic policies have kicked off

a new round of hyperinflation, tripling

the cost of fuel and other necessities.

They have also created a wide disparity

between the official rate of exchange

and the black market rate, allowing

privileged regime insiders to earn mil-

lions through currency trading while

ordinary people grow more desperate.

In January 2019 tens of thousands of

Zimbabweans took to the streets to

protest soaring prices. Troops opened

fire in Harare and Bulawayo; seventeen

people died. “Mugabe was the monster,

and getting rid of him was an opportu-

nity to start anew, but I think the whole

transition has been a disappointment,”

I was told by Sam Sifelani, an Angli-

can priest and social activist in Harare.

David Coltart, who now serves as sec-

retary treasurer of the MDC, told me

that “the president says all of the right

things, but in some respects he’s been

even harsher than Mugabe.”

In the months before Mugabe’s death

at age ninety-five on September 6, the

deposed president seemed a sad, de-

feated figure. Mugabe spent most of

his final months undergoing medical

treatment in Singapore or sitting idly

alongside Grace at the couple’s walled-

off villa, Blue Roof, in the wealthy

Borrowdale neighborhood of Harare,

brooding about his fall and nursing

grudges against those who brought him

down. Shortly before the presidential

election last year, Mugabe held a sur-

prise press conference; looking spec-

tral and vaguely sinister behind opaque

sunglasses, he mumbled a seeming en-

dorsement of the MDC. “The two [can-

didates] don’t seem to offer very much,”

he said. “So what is there? I think it is

just Chamisa.” Then he provided a self-

pitying coda to his thirty- seven- year

rule. “I was sacked from the party I

founded,” he said. “I was regarded as

an enemy.” The removal of the dictator

brought a brief moment of elation and

hope to Zimbabwe, as Rogers’s book

memorably conveys. But nearly two

years into the post- Mugabe era, Zim-

babweans are increasingly coming to

regard Mnangagwa as the enemy.

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