Zimbabwe ‘coup’ is a battle for the soul of Zanu-PF

Semantics aside, veteran Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has been ousted from power. He may be in office but he is certainly not in power. Gen Constantine Chiwenga and his colleagues in the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) are insisting that this is not a coup d’etat.

The dictionary definition of a coup d’etat is “a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics, in particular the violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group.” This definition is on all fours with what happened in Zimbabwe last Wednesday morning.

Here in Uganda the news evoked an ironic response. Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Henry Oryem Okello made a statement that the Zimbabwe army should respect the constitution. How can people who don’t respect the constitution advise anyone to respect the constitution? Here in Uganda they are bleeding the Treasury dry and clobbering any dissenting voice to remove the presidential age limit from the Constitution but they have the shameless temerity to tell the ZDF not to violate the constitution.

The powers that be in our blessed republic are putting on a brave face claiming that nothing like what happened in Zimbabwe can happen here. Maybe. Maybe not.

Over the years Museveni has managed to marginalise the Bush War veterans leaving them with nothing but symbolic power. He has elevated younger officers who revere him and made them dominant and fiercely loyal to him and only him. He has also put the Special Forces Command in charge of roughly 100km radius of Kampala. The regular soldiers are not capable of massing in the city.

The South African Development Cooperation (SADC) region has been relatively stable in the last three decades with the exception of Gen Lekhanya’s coup in Lesotho. Of all places, Zimbabwe is not the place anyone expected tanks to roll on the streets. There may be no blood on the streets but whatever has happened has left the civilian elite aghast.

Makerere University don Mwambutsya Ndebesa quipped that the military takeover in Zimbabwe is not a wind of change but a change of wind. Like the age old English royal obituary the king is dead, long live the king! It is a change of guard.

Mugabe was no longer serving the interests of the powerful elite coalition that has buttressed his regime for almost four decades. The masterminds of the overthrow had concluded that their commander-in-chief was being derailed and that the core tenets of the revolution that brought Zanu-PF into power were being subverted by a rival group within the party. That is the group characterised by the army as “criminals” around Mugabe.

The puppet show going on may continue for a little while but at the end of the day there has to be a government. And that government will come after the so-called G40 that Ms Mugabe led has been purged. Without saying so directly, the army is on a mission to cleanse the party.

In fact they consider themselves part and parcel of Zanu-PF which is a guardian party for the revolution that ousted Ian Smith’s White minority government. This is a palace coup. An internal cleansing process.

The most difficult battle, however, is now internal. The army has only saved Mugabe from himself. Zanu-PF has to do a lot of soul searching. The party has to reclaim its historical mission. The extent to which the army can contribute to this process is yet to be seen.

No one knows what is going on behind the closed doors but for once even the wily Mugabe’s bag of tricks may be empty. He has a choice either to climb out of a ground floor window or be thrown out from a tenth floor window.