Zimbabwe’s strange crisis is a very modern kind of coup

The Guardian

21st November 2017

Historically, African takeovers have been seismic and violent, but now participants are more wary of international opinion

It looked like a coup from a movie: a convoy of armoured vehicles, the president under house arrest, and the general on the nation’s screens talking of “restoring stability” in the small hours of the morning.

But since the military takeover in Zimbabwe a week ago events have departed from the script. President Robert Mugabe has not been harmed and remains in power, at least theoretically. When he refused to resign on live television on Sunday night, there were no repercussions. To oust him, parliament are using a cumbersome process of impeachment.

There is a stark contrast with many other coups d’état in Africa over the years, which have often seen heavy fighting as the military tried to seize power, and sometimes the death of the incumbent leader.

“I think it is partly a Zimbabwe thing and a lot to do with the personality of Robert Mugabe. He is known as a liberation hero and revered in most African states despite the huge damage he has done to his country, and the military here understood that to hurt him would incur the wrath of much of Africa,” said David Coltart, a senior opposition politician in Zimbabwe.

There have been more than 200 military coups since 1960 in Africa, many leading to seismic changes in the history of countries and regions as well as significant bloodshed. General Idi Amin seized power in Uganda from President Milton Obote in 1971, unleashing a reign of terror still remembered today. The coup d’état in 2012 by mutinying soldiers in Mali so destabilised the country that it allowed Islamic militants to seize much of its northern half, necessitating an intervention by French troops to restore order. Nigeria has seen eight military takeovers.

Leaders have also been assassinated while still in power. Laurent Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo was shot dead in 2001, for example.

The years of the cold war generated the highest frequency of coups, and much of the worst associated violence.

Yet this has moderated more recently and over the last 15 years there has been a “hardening anti-coup attitude”, according to Nic Cheeseman, professor of democracy at Birmingham University in the UK.

“Leaders don’t have much of an incentive to encourage free and fair elections but a coup threatens everybody, so it is much easier to get a consensus on anti-coup norms than democratic norms … People are getting smarter at avoiding criticism for coups,” Cheeseman said.

This has meant leaders of takeover are much more careful to manage domestic and international opinion than before. If a transfer of power is declared unconstitutional it can lead to a nation being suspended from the African Union (AU) and suffering significant consequences in terms of aid and investment.

Any new administration in Zimbabwe would have little chance of winning the massive funding required to restructure the collapsing economy if the international consensus was that it was illegal.

Both the AU and the regional South African Development Community (SADC) have been guarded in their statements about the situation in Zimbabwe, and have withheld any endorsement of the takeover.

On Tuesday the SADC meets in Angola to discuss the crisis there. The generals in Harare will be watching their conclusions carefully.