Party set to sack Mugabe, Zimbabweans celebrate expected downfall
Mugabe’s 37-year rule has been effectively at an end since the army seized control on Wednesday, confining him to his residence, saying it wanted to target the “criminals” around him.
State television said Mugabe would meet military commanders on Sunday, quoting Catholic priest Fidelis Mukonori, who has been mediating in negotiations with the president.
But hundreds of thousands of people had no need for a formal signal that his time had ended as they flooded the streets of Harare, singing, dancing and hugging soldiers.
In scenes reminiscent of the downfall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, men, women and children ran alongside the armoured cars and the troops who stepped in this week to oust the only ruler Zimbabwe has known since independence in 1980.
Others marched towards his lavish ‘Blue Roof’ residence, but were kept away by soldiers.
Under house arrest in his compound, the 93-year-old has watched support from his party, security services and people evaporate in less than three days.
The sources said a ZANU-PF party central committee meeting scheduled for 10:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) would also dismiss 93-year-old Mugabe’s preferred successor, his wife Grace, from her role as head of the ZANU-PF Women’s League.
Mugabe’s nephew Patrick Zhuwao, speaking from an undisclosed location in South Africa, told Reuters the leader and his wife were “ready to die for what is correct” rather than step down in order to legitimise what he described as a coup.
Zhuwao also said that only Mugabe, who had hardly slept since the military took over but was otherwise in “good” health, could call a meeting of the central committee.
“TEARS OF JOY”
On Harare’s streets, Zimbabweans spoke of a second liberation for the former British colony, alongside their dreams of political and economic change after two decades of deepening repression and hardship.
“These are tears of joy,” said Frank Mutsindikwa, 34, holding aloft the Zimbabwean flag. “I’ve been waiting all my life for this day. Free at last. We are free at last.”
Mugabe’s downfall is likely to send shockwaves across Africa, where a number of entrenched strongmen, from Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni to Democratic Republic of Congo’s Joseph Kabila, are facing mounting pressure to step aside.
The crowds in Harare have so far given a quasi-democratic veneer to the army’s intervention, backing its claims that it is merely effecting a constitutional transfer of power, which would help it avoid the diplomatic backlash and opprobrium that normally follows a coup.
The military had been prompted to act by Mugabe’s decision to sack Mnangagwa, Grace Mugabe’s main rival to succeed her husband. The next presidential election is due next year.
Protesters gather calling for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to step down, in Harare, Zimbabwe November 18, 2017. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo
“I’m ecstatic to see people give Mugabe a reality check because he has been in his echo chamber for too long, lying to himself that people still want him,” said Ruva Kudambo, 37, who came to study technology and ended up staying.
NO DIS-GRACE
For some Africans, Mugabe remains a nationalist hero, the continent’s last independence leader and a symbol of its struggle to throw off the legacy of decades of colonial subjugation.
But to many more at home and abroad, he was reviled as a dictator happy to resort to violence to retain power and to run a once-promising economy into the ground.
Stabilising the free-falling economy will be the number one priority, the documents said.
The United States, a long-time critic of Mugabe, said it was looking forward to a “new era” in Zimbabwe, while President Ian Khama of neighbouring Botswana said Mugabe had no diplomatic support in the region and should resign at once.
The Herald, the state newspaper that has served as Mugabe’s loyal mouthpiece, said ZANU-PF had called on Friday for him to go. It said ZANU-PF branches in all 10 provinces had also called for the resignation of Grace, the first lady whose ambitions to succeed her husband outraged the military and much of the country.
STUBBORN
The scenes in Harare reflect the anger and frustration that has built up among Zimbabwe’s 16 million people in nearly two decades of economic mismanagement that started with the seizure of white-owned farms in 2000, the catalyst of a wider collapse.
