The EconomistSeptember 14th 2019 Middle East & Africa 532 ed young men with time on their hands.
Economic growth is slow, and the gap be-
tween rich and poor is vast. Trust in the po-
lice and government has been weakened by
years of corruption scandals. The provi-
sion of basic services such as water and
electricity is woeful. Many South Africans
would like someone to blame, and many
politicians are keen for them to blame
someone else.
Mangosuthu Buthelezi, a veteran Zulu
leader, was one of the few politicians to try
to quell the anti-foreigner rage on Septem-
ber 8th. Speaking to a crowd, he asked them
to remember how other African countries
had supported the fight against apartheid.
“Is this how we repay them?” he asked. But
his appeals were drowned out by the angry
mob as it turned is back on him and set
about its grim business. 7R
obert mugabehad been out of power
for nearly two years when he died on
September 6th (see Obituary). He had been
far away and sick since April, so you might
think his death would not rattle his succes-
sor as president of Zimbabwe, Emmerson
Mnangagwa. But bones have a way of mak-
ing themselves felt.
In the past few months Zimbabwe has
fallen into a pit of despond that is as deep
as it was during a horrendous period in
2008 when inflation reached world-record
levels and shelves in the shops went bare.
Rumours of rancour and plots in Zanu-pf,
the ruling party, especially among the gen-
erals, are flying thick and fast. Even the ar-
rangements for the dead despot’s funeral
have been causing confusion, consterna-
tion and bad blood.
As The Economistwent to press, Mr Mu-
gabe’s body, after arriving from Singapore,
where he died, was due to lie in state for
two days in a football stadium near the cen-tre of Harare, the capital, before being
moved to the bigger National Sports Stadi-
um. This happens to be across the road
from Heroes’ Acre, a hill on the edge of the
city where the leading lights of the anti-co-
lonial liberation struggle, including Mr
Mugabe’s first wife, Sally, are buried. A
place has long been reserved next to her.
The funeral service is expected to take
place in the bigger stadium on Saturday. Mr
Mnangagwa, the dead man’s bloodstained,
long-serving enforcer, who ousted him in a
coup in 2017, is expected to preside. The
government says Mr Mugabe is to be buried
in Heroes’ Acre the next day. But his family,
led by his widely reviled and notoriously
acquisitive second wife, Grace, wanted him
buried in his home village, Kutama, an
hour’s drive to the west. Wherever it takes
place, the prospect of huge crowds, swelled
by rising anger and desperation among the
poor, leaves Zimbabwe’s rulers nervous.
That is not surprising. Electricity isavailable for barely six hours a day. Clean
water runs once a week. A civil servant’s
monthly salary barely buys two days of gro-
ceries for a family of four. Drivers queue for
hours for scarce supplies of petrol, the
price of which has more than quintupled
this year. Annual inflation is reckoned to
be about 500%. The value of Zimbabwe’s
newly introduced currency, which is
meant to take the place of the American
dollars that have been used for a decade,
has slumped.
Western governments and bodies such
as the imf will not lend unless Zimbabwe
clears its arrears with the World Bank and
the African Development Bank. The fi-
nance minister, Mthuli Ncube, has cut sub-
sidies and sought to reduce the state pay-
roll but seems increasingly erratic. Harsher
austerity risks a popular explosion. More-
over, he is hobbled by party bigwigs and
generals who fiddle the foreign-exchange
rates and continue to plunder the treasury.
Outsiders also insist that, if Mr Mnan-
gagwa (pictured on the right) is to get for-
eign help, he should be less repressive, first
by repealing two laws that have long en-
abled the government to lock opponents
up and muzzle independent voices. He is
moving towards doing so, but has yet to
complete the task. Human-rights cam-
paigners say his proposed security bill
looks a lot like the repressive old act, and
that abuses have surged even in the past
month. They report more than a score of
new charges of treason, abductions and
cases of torture of opposition campaign-
ers, mainly belonging to the Movement for
Democratic Change (mdc). Civil-society
groups say they are being threatened as vi-
ciously as ever.
Mr Mnangagwa has long been adept at
suppressing dissent, though street vio-
lence could erupt again as the economy
melts down. The mdc insists that, before it
might agree to co-operate in a “transitional
mechanism” to implement reforms, he
should first admit that last year’s parlia-
mentary and presidential elections were
rigged, something he is unlikely to do.
In any case, the biggest threat to his sur-
vival comes from within his own party, es-
pecially from the generals who helped him
seize power in the first place. His first vice-
president, Constantino Chiwenga, the
armed-forces chief behind the coup, is said
to be gravely ill. Other army types are re-
ported to be plotting for the succession.
Some prominent holdovers from the Mu-
gabe era may, it is speculated, at last be
charged with corruption. Mr Mugabe’s
widow and her family, whose bid for power
sparked the coup, may finally be dis-
patched into political oblivion. And the le-
thal internecine struggles within the rul-
ing party that marked the despot’s 37 years
in power will persist beyond his grave,
wherever it may be. 7Robert Mugabe’s death will do nothing to lighten his successor’s burdenZimbabwe after Robert MugabeGrave threats
Backs to the wall