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  1. #1
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Zimbabwe: after Mugabe resigns

    Mugabe's resignation means - hopefully - a new, better era for Zimbabwe and so time for a new thread.

    The old thread was:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=4896
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  2. #2
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default After "Bob" a "Crocodile"

    Via a Zimbabwean group email citing Emmerson Mnangagwa said:
    My desire is to join all Zimbabweans in a new era where corruption, incompetency, dereliction of duty is not tolerated. In the new Zimbabwe it is important for everyone to join hands so that we rebuild the nation to its full glory. This is not a job for Zanu PF alone, but for all people of Zimbabwe.
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  3. #3
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Robert Mugabe and the future of Zimbabwe

    A South African analyst, who knows Zimbabwe, via IISS adds his viewpoint written before Mugabe's resignation:
    • Robert Mugabe is likely to be in a state of shock, and may not know what's happening around him.
    • Figures from the Zanu PF old guard have taken power. The party's younger generation were power hungry, but have nothing to offer the country.
    • Zimbabweans have no great trust in the military. Its officers helped Mugabe rig elections.
    • People will not expect great changes. Mugabe's likely replacement, Emerson Mnangagwa, has been running the secret police who have been terrorising the country for years. He is "Mugabe Mark Two".
    • Zimbabwe's economy is in bad shape. But with the country's vast natural wealth, it shouldn't take long to resuscitate.
    • Mugabe combined liberation with repression in a way no-one else in the region could. He was evil, but also rebuilt his country in the 1980s.

    Link:http://www.iiss.org/en/iiss%20voices...we-crisis-513d
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  4. #4
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Some different perspectives. First a selection of articles on a Pan-Africanist website which I have glanced at:http://www.pambazuka.org/

    Then three Daily Mail articles by their reporter in Harare; they appear to be based on local rumours and a fair dollop of briefing by the new regime's supporters.

    On 17/11/17:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ot-Mugabe.html

    On 23/11/17:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...-released.html

    On 25/11/17:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ed-Mugabe.html
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  5. #5
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Mnangagwa and the Gukurahundi – fact and fiction

    An op-ed in the South African new website by Dr. Stuart Doran (who has written a book on Zimbabwe's troubled times), that "joins the dots" to help assess whether President Mnangagwa has "dirty hands".
    Link:https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/arti.../#.Wh6sSzdpHtQ
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 11-29-2017 at 12:56 PM. Reason: 767v
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  6. #6
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default The new President is not a reformer

    Via a BZS email a curious two page commentary from Zimbabwe by Zimbabweans on events, with a very clear pointer to the Chinese model of development not being suitable:
    .. ‘democracy’ and ‘development’ cannot be decoupled especially as pushed for by the militarists in the Chinese model....
    On the new President:
    ED is a Trojan horse of what others have called the ‘deep state’ which was very desperate to reproduce itself and its elite network. The ballot box has always presented a threat to a network of elites who have looted Zimbabwe dry and have been party to these ‘treacherous shenanigans’ as others have said. The hierarchical party-state apparatus built by the ruling elites steam-rolls on its opponents extra-legally and extra-judicially. To start to imagine that ED has suddenly become a reformer and a democrat goes to show the level of political disorientation currently fashionable.
    Link:http://ipazim.org/wp-content/uploads...ns-Edition.pdf
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  7. #7
    Council Member AdamG's Avatar
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    Default

    RATON, N.M. (AP) — A group of prominent friends, including a key Zimbabwean opposition leader and a Texas-based investor and philanthropist, was heading to a ranch in the U.S. state of New Mexico when their helicopter crashed and burned in a remote area, killing five people aboard.
    Friends and family members confirmed Thursday that opposition leader Roy Bennett and his wife, Heather, had traveled to New Mexico to spend their holiday with friend and wealthy businessman Charles Burnett III at his ranch. Burnett's friends, pilot Jamie Coleman Dodd of Colorado and co-pilot Paul Cobb of Texas, were ferrying the group aboard a Huey UH-1 when it went down after dark Wednesday.
    All five died, according to New Mexico State Police.
    https://www.yahoo.com/news/zimbabwe-...192702271.html
    A scrimmage in a Border Station
    A canter down some dark defile
    Two thousand pounds of education
    Drops to a ten-rupee jezail


    http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg

  8. #8
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default The Military's Role in the fall of Robert Mugabe in 2017

    Dr. Tendi is a Zimbabwean academic @ Oxford University and he spoke this week at a public event following a month in Zimbabwe collecting information on what happened. His uni bio:http://www.africanstudies.ox.ac.uk/miles-tendi

    Earlier he had written:
    Tendi asserts that Mugabe has maintained civilian control over the military through shared ideology, patronage, and the formal and informal power he gets from his position as commander-in-chief and being the most senior remaining figure from Zimbabwe's nationalist liberation struggle.
    Link:http://allafrica.com/stories/201708120054.html

    Some key points follow (the footnotes and more are on the attachment):

    The acting head of CIO (national intelligence agency) Aaron Nhepera after an episode approved of the coup. This episode was when initially he attempted to move against the coup and called the Air Force commander, Perence Shiri[1], who was in Dubai. Who then forwarded this information to General Chiwenga in Harare, who could then respond. The CIO’s head’s decision to ask Phiri was a surprise as he was a personal rival of Phiri, including having a role in a 2008 attempt to kill him and an investigation traced the principal in the plot was General Chiwenga .

    T
    he Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) commander, Commissioner Chihuri, was against the coup and had a paramilitary formation, the Support Unit (SU) available at two barracks near Harare. The Army surrounded the SU at Chikurubi[2] Barracks (there were reports of gunfire at the time before the SU stopped[3]) and the second SU unit at Inkomo Barracks was intercepted on route to Harare[4].

    The most amazing part of the talk was that during the crisis an attempt was made within State House, presumably with Robert Mugabe’s consent, to prepare a force of mercenaries outside Zimbabwe to intervene[1]. All the telephone calls and discussions were overheard, as the house was bugged. The information was circulated within the Army leadership, thereby gaining support for the coup. Alongside a warning to the Mugabe family that in the event of mercenaries arriving they would be “taken out” (Robert Mugabe and his wife remained throughout the crisis at State House, presumably their two sons were there too).

    · ‘Three hundred soldiers did the coup, half from the Presidential Guard (who wear distinctive yellow berets) and one other Army unit. The ZNA is forty thousand strong’.
    Attached Files Attached Files
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 02-03-2018 at 09:13 PM. Reason: 3,974v
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  9. #9
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Zimbabwe was united. This election has divided us again

    Blessing-Miles Tendi (Oxford University) has a comment on the election result and the violence that followed in Harare. He ends with:
    Zimbabwe’s election has divided its people, and this is not conducive to democracy. Zanu-PF’s two-thirds majority renders parliament – a cornerstone of any functional democracy – weak in relation to a president with disputed legitimacy. And Zimbabwe’s deep state – the military – will linger on, influentially, in the political background. Despite all the joy and the hope following Mugabe’s overthrow, in the aftermath of this election, Zimbabweans’ democratic dreams appear as distant as ever.
    Link:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/03/zimbabwe-election-result-disputed-army

    Watching the limited footage it is very unclear why the Army had to be deployed, let alone why six people were shot dead. So much for an apolitical army that was promised a few months ago.

    Professor Stephen Chan adds:https://theconversation.com/zimbabwe...on-era-101045?

    There has been some coverage here, although none covered what was happening in the rural areas. The linked BBC report has the figures:
    Figures released by the electoral commission say Mr Mnangagwa and his Zanu-PF party won 50.4% of the presidential vote - ensuring by only 36,464 ballots that there did not have to be a run-off.
    Chamisa tallied 44.3% of the almost five million votes cast, with the 21 other candidates taking up the remainder.
    Results of the parliamentary election gave Zanu-PF 144 seats; the MDC Alliance, which is made up of seven parties, 64 seats...
    Link:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-45064231
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 08-06-2018 at 08:28 AM. Reason: 7,775v today
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  10. #10
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default This election was and is all about – “it’s the junta – stupid”

    An article by an opposition MDC member on what the elections meant. Short of time? The Army rules and makes money.

    Or this one sentence:
    It is a tragic myth that Zimbabwe can possibly be better in the hands of this small group of men who have wrought so much harm to Zimbabwe over 38 years.
    Link:https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/arti...will-continue/
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  11. #11
    Council Member davidbfpo's Avatar
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    Default Zimbabwe: troubled nation now faces tough foreign policy choices

    Professor Stephen Chan, SOAS London, has a commentary on the lack of change after the elections; alas not really a surprise. I noted this passage, which may explain why:
    Although the Americans have lowered the tone of their criticisms of the government, the softly-softly approach cannot hide the strict conditionality they seek. This resides in guarantees of future electoral conduct, but also essentially the desecuritisation of the ZANU-PF machine. In a word, the problem is Constantino Chiwenga, the former defence forces chief, now vice-president, who has a strong influence within the military – but, no matter what the Americans want, he is going nowhere fast, and he will not sacrifice his deep influence within the military.
    Link:https://theconversation.com/zimbabwe...hoices-104279?

    So the "robber barons" in ZANU-PF continue to feast and the people.....
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 12-08-2018 at 08:08 PM. Reason: 9,153v today
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