Zimbabwe: Stepping In

ZIMBABWE

Stepping In

Zimbabwe’s top military commander threatened to step in to halt President Robert Mugabe’s purge of veterans of the country’s independence struggle from his ruling ZANU-PF party.

Among other ousters, last week Mugabe fired Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa in a move seen as paving the way for Mugabe’s wife, Grace, to take over.

“When it comes to matters of protecting our revolution, the military will not hesitate to step in,” the New York Times quoted Gen. Constantine Chiwenga as saying.

Mugabe did not fight in the armed struggle that helped lead to the country’s independence from Britain in 1980, but he was a prominent leader in the movement. His wife was a teenage student at the time.

Flanked by some 90 other military commanders, Chiwenga criticized “the current shenanigans by people who do not share the same liberation history of ZANU-PF” – a reference to Grace and her ally Jonathan Moyo – setting the stage for a potential showdown.

Notably, in 2008 the military intervened to stop a democratically elected government that lacked liberation-war credentials from taking power.