Zimbabwe: after Mugabe resigns

[davidbfpo]

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 .

The 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’.