Bulawayo News 24

2nd December 2017

Almost 15 years after Henry Olonga wore a black armband, Mugabe’s rule in Zimbabwe is finally over. “I’m stunned,” he says. “Here we are in a country that is Mugabe-less for the first time in 37 years. It’s extraordinary.”

Henry Olonga had long assumed that Mugabe – who “held 15 million people ransom to the weird machinations of some depraved mind” – would die in power. “I hope that Zimbabwe will get leadership that is worthy of the people. The Zimbabwean people should say never again to someone like Mugabe. We can’t have a despot like that again.”

And yet what replaces Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe remains uncertain. Mugabe’s successor, his former vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, “is cut from the same cloth,” Olonga acknowledges. “You could argue that this man was there when a lot of the nonsense happened in Zimbabwe – human rights abuses in the 1980s in Matabeleland, farm invasions, the bulldozing of hundreds of thousands of people’s homes, corruption.”

Still, Henry Olonga cannot help but be optimistic. “You want to give someone the benefit of the doubt. If there’s the opportunity for them to bring effective change in a country – well, you give them a chance.”

The germ of one of the most famous protests in sport came a month before the 2003 World Cup, over a cup of coffee with Andy Flower. He was surprised by the invitation. On a tour of England in 2000, which took place against the backdrop of land seizures by the Mugabe regime, principally against white farmers, Olonga criticised how white players treated their black staff on their estates in Zimbabwe.

“They treated me differently to the way they would treat their own workers. I challenged them. Is that right, you know? Is it right to look down on people?”
He and Flower “weren’t that close,” Olonga recalls. Yet over coffee the two found a shared cause. “Although we had a strained professional relationship we found ourselves on the same side of a coin, of the idea of protesting against Mugabe. And so we found common ground, and then put our differences behind us.”

Flower initially proposed that that the entire squad boycott the World Cup. Olonga considered this impractical. Eventually the two, together with David Coltart, a lawyer and MP from the Movement for Democratic Change, hit upon a more subtle protest.

Flower and Olonga, the leading white and black players in the team – Olonga, indeed, was Zimbabwe’s first ever black cricketer – would wear armbands in protest against Mugabe. The night before Zimbabwe’s opening game, Olonga watched Gladiator for inspiration. When he and Flower took to the field, they wore black adhesive tape, and released a 450-word statement “mourning the death of democracy in our beloved Zimbabwe” under Mugabe.

Olonga had worn the armband expecting it to receive international attention. What he had not expected, as he details in his absorbing autobiography Blood, Sweat and Treason, was the depth of hatred he now faced in Zimbabwe.

“We were standing up against that kind of inequality between the rich and the poor, the extravagance of the Mugabe family. And the poor guy who doesn’t have enough money to buy a new pair of shoes or fresh shirt hated me more than Mugabe, the man who was the cause of his misery. Go figure. The guy with nothing says: ‘Olonga, you’re a sell-out!'”

Olonga was immediately dropped from the team, for clearly non-cricketing reasons, and was derided as an Uncle Tom. “You’ve got the first black player for Zimbabwe as a mentor to a mainly black side, standing up against the government of Robert Mugabe, a liberation war hero. They didn’t like it. So they vilified me.”

He was followed. His phone was bugged. He received death threats by email. During one match, Olonga was abused by Mugabe’s youth militia. Most ominous of all was a message his father received from a contact at the central intelligence organisation just before the game against Pakistan: ‘Tell your son that he needs to get out of Zimbabwe before the World Cup ends.’

“I aware of the fact that I could meet an ugly end,” Olonga says. “There was definitely moments of fear.”

Olonga was lucky. After a few nervous weeks in South Africa, David Folb, the chairman of the Lashings World XI, helped him move to the UK. Yet Mugabe’s regime still afflicted Olonga: his Zimbabwe passport expired in 2006, and he was told that he could only renew it by returning there.

And so, for a decade he was a citizen of nowhere. He remained in the UK, in Taunton, but, until he gained a UK passport in 2015, could not leave the country. A few months after getting his passport, he emigrated to Adelaide, the home town of his wife Tara, with their two children.

Cricket gave Olonga much joy – crucial contributions in consecutive Test victories against India and Pakistan; a match-clinching spell of reverse swing against India in the 1999 World Cup; 6-19 in an ODI thrashing of England – and yet it also burdened him. Olonga was given “label after label after label” – everything from ‘erratic’ bowler to tail-end ‘rabbit’ and then, most unwanted of all, the ‘Uncle Tom’ moniker. He likens his departure from the game, aged just 26, to “a bad divorce” and considers cricket “very insular and inward-looking”.

Charity work, mentoring children and helping prisoners, are altogether more fulfilling. He also hopes to release an album next year, and is working on producing short films.

“I’m in a place where I’m much happier, because I don’t have the constant scrutiny of selectors coming to watch games,” he says.

There is even a sense that the new Zimbabwe might embrace Olonga. In 2001 he released a song, Our Zimbabwe, a collaborative venture with a vision of the inclusive and welcoming country he thought Zimbabwe could become. It was a number one hit in his home country but was effectively barred from the airwaves after Olonga’s black armband protest.

While the emblem of Olonga’s courage – that black adhesive tape – lies somewhere in his shed, his song is now being widely played again. Olonga himself will sing it at a concert in Zimbabwe later this month.

It will be his first trip back to Zimbabwe, where many of his family remain, since the 2003 World Cup. Only now Mugabe has been ousted does he deem it safe to return.
“It’s bittersweet. When I left Zimbabwe it was under a cloud and it was a traumatic separation. A lot of my friends have moved on and left. A lot of the things I planned and hoped to achieve in Zimbabwe effectively ended.

“But if we had the death of democracy in 2003, I would hope that in 10 years’ time democracy in Zimbabwe will be alive and well. It sounds cheesy but you’ve got to do cheese once in a while.”

He laughs, and then returns to his new life.

Gulf Times

1st December 2017

“We dare not squander the moment,” Emmerson Mnangagwa said just a week ago at his swearing in as president, referring to the high hopes Zimbabweans had placed on him as a harbinger of change for a desperate nation.

Seven days on and optimism was turning to cynicism as Zimbabweans’ collective high following the ouster of longtime leader Robert Mugabe began to wear off and reality started to sink in.

Yesterday Mnangagwa’s cabinet was announced, with key positions handed to the military top brass who oversaw the new president’s stunning turn of fate — from being fired as Mugabe’s deputy just weeks earlier to replacing him and being hailed as a national rescuer.

No opposition members were included in the cabinet, dashing the hopes of many Zimbabweans for a unity government.

Those rewarded were the military and the politically influential war veterans who had backed the coup — all ruling party stalwarts and no new blood.

“Nothing new, same old faces that were responsible for our suffering for the past decades,” said Emily Zondwa, a University of Zimbabwe student.

In his inaugural address Mnangagwa pledged reforms — with a focus on the ailing economy — as well as promising to stamp out corruption and hold elections next year.

He failed to mention press freedom, human rights or show much interest in bringing the opposition in from the cold.

“Zimbabwe, you are right to feel betrayed,” tweeted opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) member and ex-minister David Coltart.

“On 18 November, we all came out on the streets, united as a people around a common vision of a new Zimbabwe. This cabinet does not represent a new Zimbabwe but the entrenchment of the old failed political elite,” he said.

Coltart was referring to a huge rally where Zimbabweans of all political affiliations took to the street to demand Mugabe step down.

At that outpouring of hope, many protesters said they were aware of Mnangagwa’s chequered past, but still believed any change had to be good change.

But MDC Secretary General Douglas Mwonzora said that the new cabinet showed Mnangagwa was no reformer.

“The appointment of the cabinet was an anti-climax for Zimbabweans; it showed that the new president is not progressive. This shows the militarisation of key institutions,” he said, adding there were few women or young people among Mnangagwa’s picks.

Tendai Biti, Zimbabwe’s former finance minister and another opposition leader, said on Twitter that Zimbabweans had been naive.

“Up until now, we had given the putsch the benefit of the doubt. We did so in the genuine, perhaps naive view that the country could actually move forward. We craved for change, peace and stability in our country.” “How wrong we were,” he added.

Mnangagwa has been linked to one of Zimbabwe’s darkest chapters, the so-called Gukurahundi massacres of a rebellious Ndebele tribe shortly after Independence in 1980.
He denies involvement.

He is also widely believed to have been involved in violent crackdowns on the opposition in recent years, members of whom were threatened, tortured or disappeared.
He has urged his countrymen to “let bygones be bygones” and the ruling Zanu-PF party has said it will not be calling for the Mugabes’ prosecution.

Bulawayo News 24

30th November 2017

The low registration of voters in Bulawayo is of great concern, says former Minister of Education David Coltart.

Coltart attributed voter apathy in Bulawayo to low morale and relocation to greener pastures abroad. As of November, 22, Bulawayo registered 114 389 voters, representing 27,9 percent of the targeted 409 389 people.

“The low registration of voters in Byo is of great concern.

“It is rooted in v (very) low morale here and in the fact that many of our citizens (more so than elsewhere) are in the Diaspora. The Constitution must be fully respected” i.e. ALL citizens over 18 must be allowed to register and vote,” tweeted Coltart.

However, a tweeter user, Tee Vanjick #FBPE‏ said attributing Bulawayo voter apathy to emigration is problematic since it carries the connotation that the city of kings is empty.

“Sorry David, I’m not laughing at the matter of voting but the excuse you just put there? Is Bulawayo empty because people are in the diaspora?”

As of November, 22, Harare registered 468 149 people, which is 34,8 percent of its target of 1 345 818, while Manicaland province registered 373 356 people.

Mashonaland Central has registered 306 768 voters. ZEC statistics show that Mashonaland East has registered 341 601, Mashonaland West, 274 125, Matabeleland North, 389 592 people, Matabeleland South, 123 366 people.

Masvingo has registered 48,8 percent of its 754 314 target. Zimbabwe is set to hold its election in 2018 which will be heavily contested by ZANU PF, MDC Alliance and an array of opposition parties that mushroom towards election time.

Bulawayo 24 News

27th November 2017

The arrest of former Finance Minister Ignatious Chombo over a litany of graft-related allegations has been described by former Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture David Coltart as the following of legal channels.

“It is astonishing to see former Minister Chombo in leg irons. At least legal channels are now being used to….,” he tweeted.

Chombo, the former ZANU PF Secretary for Administration is being represented by Lovemore Madhuku and is set to appear in court today for bail application.

Azor Ahai retweeted to Coltart saying “The way the former minister was handled is not to be admired.

“Though his chains should remind people in high offices , what abuse of those offices get them.”

Another commentator said it is now a fight between the Lacoste and the G40 “survival of the fittest.”

“Its only faction after the other after the tables have turned.That’s my take, ” Mongabeli Wabayi tweeted.

The Sunday Times

November 26 2017

Zimbabweans old enough to recall the early days have reason to fear the new president

When Blessing Chebundo watched the crowds cheering and dancing at the inauguration of Zimbabwe’s new president on Friday, he wondered if it was time to leave the country. Chebundo, the only person to have taken on Emmerson Mnangagwa and defeated him, says the man now drawing all the adulation tried twice to have him killed.

In a hot, bare office with no water in the taps, a few Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) posters on the peeling walls and a pile of registration papers for next year’s elections on the table, a round-faced man in a crimson velvet jacket tells a story that gives a chilling insight into the man known as “the ­Crocodile”.

At 59, Chebundo is lucky to be alive. A long-time trade unionist at the country’s biggest fertiliser plant, he was persuaded to run for the newly formed MDC opposition party in the June 2000 elections in his home town of Kweke, which had been Mnangagwa’s constituency since independence in 1980. That is when his problems started.

“No one wanted to take on Mnangagwa,” says Chebundo. “He is one of the most feared politicians in the country.”

He soon learnt why. On May 9, 2000, he was on his way to the bus stop to go to work when he was surrounded by 15 youths. “One of them hit me with a pitch handle and I fell to the ground. Another grabbed a can from under his shirt and poured petrol over me. I grabbed one of the ­others and said we’re going to burn together.” He was only saved because in the scuffle the matches had been covered in petrol and wouldn’t light.

On May 13 his campaign manager, Abraham Mtsheno, was attacked. “They petrol-bombed his house in the night so it burnt down and beat his family including his one-year-old daughter so badly she ended up in hospital.”

Two days later they went for ­Chebundo’s house. Fearing an attack, he had sent his pregnant wife and child away. Suddenly, after darkness fell, he heard a noise. “When I tried to open the door an object flew past me and hit the wall and exploded. I thought, ‘Oh God.’”

He closed the door but then heard a window pane breaking as another petrol bomb sailed in. “Soon every room was petrol-bombed. I was inside and everything was on fire.”

He called the police but was told there was no one available. “It was a nightmare I didn’t know how to escape. Inside was fire all around and when I opened the curtain I could see a sea of people holding picks, knobkerries and other weapons. I thought, ‘If I go out I’m killed. If I stay inside I’m consumed by fire.’”

Will it be a new dawn for Zimbabwe?

Eventually he grabbed the breadknife and ran outside. “There must have been 40 or 50 of them and I knew I couldn’t pass them. I told them, ‘You’re going to kill me but I’m going to take as many as I can of you.’”

He started advancing towards them, brandishing the knife. Among them he recognised a local police inspector and a retired policeman. “They started retreating,” he said. “Afterwards they told people they thought I was possessed as I looked like I was flying.”

Though he survived, his house burnt down. “I lost everything I’d worked for over 21 years,” he said. “All our possessions, my three vehicles, my children’s things.” Despite the intimidation he ended up winning more than twice as many votes as Mnangagwa.

It may seem bizarre that the man who rigged elections for Robert Mugabe could not win his own seat in a poll, but Chebundo says urban seats are harder to rig and the attacks made local people more opposed to the ruling party.

“Winning the election in 2000 was like going to heaven and then coming down with a bang,” he said. “We’d had so many people killed or beaten and homes destroyed.”

In 2005 Chebundo managed to defeat Mnangagwa again, after which his rival created a new constituency.

He had mixed feelings last week as he watched fellow opposition activists pulling down portraits of Mugabe and stamping on street signs bearing the name of the 93-year-old deposed ruler. “Of course I’m glad he’s gone,” he said. “But no one can blame me for having reservations. Personally I’d say Mugabe is a better deal — I don’t like him, but this person is worse.”

He is not the only one. In the dirt-poor village of Emkayeni, just outside Tsholo­tsho in Matabeleland, Georgina Tshuma Ndlovu, 70, stands at a grave, tugging at her blue dress with red stitching, and bows her head.

“The pain never goes away,” she says. There lies her eldest son, ZuluBoy, shot dead at 19 with a friend while they were ploughing, by soldiers from Zimbabwe’s notorious Fifth Brigade.

Georgina Ndlovu with son Kenneth by the grave of her other son, who was killed during the Matabeleland massacresGeorgina Ndlovu with son Kenneth by the grave of her other son, who was killed during the Matabeleland massacres

With her is her son Kenneth, who ran away when he heard the shots that day in January 1983 but was later caught and beaten so badly that he still drags his right leg. He was 16 at the time.

“I thought they would kill me too,” he said. “Three times they pointed the gun at my head. Then they threw me face down on the ground and beat me so hard with droppers [fence poles] I couldn’t walk for a month.”

They are victims of Gukurahundi, the most brutal massacre of the Mugabe regime in which an estimated 20,000 people from the Ndebele tribe were killed or disappeared. The name comes from a Shona word that means “the early rain that washes away the chaff before spring” and the aim was to wipe out opposition after independence. “We call it the time of the killing,” said Georgina.

Mnangagwa was head of Zimbabwe’s spy agency, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), in the mid-1980s when the massacre was under way and is believed to have played a key role. “Mnangagwa was the leader of that army that did this Gukurahundi,” said Mtshumayeli Moyo, 60, the local head man, who was also abducted by soldiers. “I’m worried that what happened before will come back.”

Moyo had his identity card taken and ripped up but escaped with his life, he thinks, because he is partially crippled. His wife, Sihle, was so badly beaten that she could not walk for weeks.

The Fifth Brigade, trained by North Koreans and headed by Perence Shiri, who is now air force chief and was alongside Mnangagwa at his inauguration on Friday, spread terror throughout southern Zimbabwe from 1983 to 1987. The brigade set up camps in two schools and systematically went from village to village. Within six weeks more than 2,000 civilians had died, hundreds of homes had burnt down and thousands of civilians had been beaten.

Most of the dead were killed in public executions. Afterwards villagers were sometimes forced at gunpoint to dance on the freshly dug graves and sing pro-Mugabe songs. Entire families were burnt alive inside huts, women raped and mothers-to-be bayoneted.

Thirty years later many of those who witnessed the violence have now died in a country where life expectancy is, at 58, one of the lowest in the world. Others are scared to talk. Meetings I had set up at the start of the week were cancelled once Mnangagwa was announced as president.

Gukurahundi has never been officially acknowledged by the regime, and Mnangagwa has denied his role. “How do I become the enforcer?” he asked a New Statesman interviewer last year. “During Gukurahundi we had the president, the minister of defence, the commander of the army, and I was none of that.”

But the state-controlled Chronicle in Bulawayo reported him at the time likening dissidents to “bugs and cockroaches that had reached such an epidemic that the government needed to bring in DDT to get rid of them”.

A still taken from rare footage of the Fifth Brigade during the Gukurahundi massacresA still taken from rare footage of the Fifth Brigade during the Gukurahundi massacres

David Coltart, a lawyer in Bulawayo, opposition senator and minister for education in Mugabe’s cabinet during the government of national unity in 2009-13, describes Mnangagwa as one of the architects of the massacre.

In his book The Struggle Continues he documents how under Mnangagwa the CIO provided lists of members of the rival party Zapu that the Fifth Brigade would go after. He quotes him warning in a speech in April 1983: “Woe unto those who will choose the path of collaboration with dissidents, for we will certainly shorten their stay on earth.”

“Everyone’s celebrating but I’m not in a celebratory mood,” said Coltart, who used to sit two seats away from Mnangagwa in cabinet. “I’m happy Robert Mugabe has gone but am worried about Mnangagwa.

“Is he going to be another Gorbachev or de Klerk, or will he be a Milosevic or Idi Amin? The choice is literally that stark.

“His history doesn’t give us much encouragement,” he added. “It’s not just more of the same — it’s potentially worse. You have someone much younger and more vigorous and much closer to the military.”

A guerrilla fighter at the age of 16, Mnangagwa narrowly escaped a death sentence for helping to blow up a Rhodesian train. After taking a law degree, he became a commander in the liberation movement and was trained in China. He has been at Mugabe’s side for 50 years, first as his bodyguard and personal assistant and then, after independence, as minister of justice, state security and defence and Speaker of parliament. He has long seen himself as the heir apparent, sidelining rivals such as his fellow vice-president Joice Mujuru. When it looked as though he was going to lose everything to the first lady, Grace Mugabe, his close friend ­General Constantine Chiwenga, the head of the army, made his move, launching a coup that Mnangagwa is widely believed to have orchestrated.

It’s not just Gukurahundi that concerns Coltart but also Mnangagwa’s role in the 2008 presidential election, when he orchestrated a wave of deadly violence and intimidation that forced the opposition MDC to pull out of a run-off vote that Mugabe risked losing. Coltart says he helped rig the last elections too.

“He has been Mugabe’s point man all along,” he says. “He was his point man in Gukurahundi, point man in the run-off elections in 2008 — it was Mnangagwa who organised that entire election with all the incidents of targeting — and then, with General Chiwenga and the military, he ran the 2013 elections, where I had ­soldiers in my constituency voting early and often.”

His fears are shared by Chief Felix Nhlanhla Ndiweni, 52, who lived in Canvey Island, Essex, and worked as an auditor until three years ago, when he returned to succeed his father as paramount chief of the Ndiweni. “We’ve been through a hellish patch for 37 years, so, yes, the exit of Mugabe is good,” he said, “but we’re opening a Pandora’s box and I’m concerned history will repeat itself.”

Speaking in clipped English and wearing tribal beads and a black leather headband, he said barely a day passes without him meeting victims of Gukurahundi and insisted that Mnangagwa must address the issue urgently.

“We can’t gloss over the most heinous of human crimes: genocide. It happened, and thousands and thousands were killed,” he said.

He is calling for an inter­national investigation. “A simple apology is not enough. We need information: where are the bones of our loved ones and who did what? And at some point some individuals have to be locked up for this.”

Not only is the new president the most feared man in Zimbabwe but he is also reputed to be the richest. “He is the wealthiest man in the country,” said Tendai Biti, a former finance minister and an opposition leader.

How he acquired that wealth is a ­matter of great speculation. His business interests include a chain of petrol stations, ethanol production and gold panning. Eyebrows were raised when, in his inauguration speech, he called for an end to corruption. “As we focus on recovering our economy, we must shed misbehaviours and acts of indiscipline, which have characterised the past,” he said.

Demonstrators outside parliament on the day it began impeachment proceedings against Robert MugabeDemonstrators outside parliament on the day it began impeachment proceedings against Robert Mugabe

A UN security council report accused him of plundering diamonds from the Democratic Republic of Congo when Zimbabwean troops intervened to prop up the government of President Laurent Kabila in the late 1990s. According to the 2002 report, Mnangagwa was “key strategist for the Zimbabwean branch of the elite network” looting precious minerals.

This dark history makes some doubt his pledges to bring in a new Zimbabwe, particularly when he ended his first speech after Mugabe’s resignation by saying in Shona, “The dogs may keep on barking but Zanu-PF will keep on ruling”, and then departing in a long motorcade.

After all the euphoria of the past 12 days, some Zimbabweans are starting to wonder if they have been fooled. “It’s a Zanu-PF squabble we allowed ourselves to be sucked into,” said Shari Eppel, director of the Solidarity Peace Trust and one of the authors of the Gukurahundi report. “It was never about a return to democracy. I feel people en masse are succumbing to Stockholm syndrome, mistaking their captors for liberators,” she warned as she watched people hug soldiers and praise the army, which launched the coup that led to Mugabe’s resignation. “The army are not our friends and liberators. They never have been and never will be, particularly in this area.”

On Friday the military was clearly in evidence at Mnangagwa’s inauguration in a packed Harare stadium to watch him take the chains of office. It was followed by a fly-past and a 21-gun salute.

“We have no time to squander,” he told cheering crowds. The biggest challenge is an economic crisis so severe that the country has only enough money to fund one month of imports and more than nine out of 10 people are jobless.

Celebrations in the streets of Harare as news of Robert Mugabe’s resignation spreadsCelebrations in the streets of Harare as news of Robert Mugabe’s resignation spreads

Post-apocalyptic scenes lay before us as we drove from Harare to Bulawayo and then Tsholotsho: farms derelict, hotels abandoned, grass growing in factories and long queues outside banks. Big companies such as Sisco steel and Sable Chemicals have closed. Villages like Ndlovu’s are still ploughed by donkey, water must be collected from wells and most huts have only a little grain. “We’ve actually gone backwards,” said Moyo, the head man.

For this to change Mnangagwa needs the help of the international community, and he pledged in his speech to re-engage with the world. Opposition leaders are urging the international community to demand in return the freeing of state media and the holding of free and fair elections overseen by a unity government. He is expected to announce his cabinet this week. But many in the ruling party see no need to bring in opposition.

“Why should we?” asked Terence Mukupe, MP for Harare East. “The constitution says if you recall the president, the party in power stays till next election. If MDC were the ones in this scenario they wouldn’t be asking for a coalition.”

A former Wall Street banker, Mukupe is a supporter of Mnangagwa who is a close friend of his father-in-law and was guest of honour at his wedding, and says his fearsome reputation is unfair. Emmerson is a very humble guy, a man of few words,” he said. “He listens, whereas President Mugabe became detached from the people and the only person he listened to was Grace and her cabal.”

“People who say he is ruthless are people from the opposition. No one in the street has a problem with Emmerson coming. Everyone is celebrating and singing songs about him.”

The song he mentions, Mudhara Achauya, means The Big Man Is Coming.

Washington Post

25 November 2017

HARARE, Zimbabwe —For 37 years, it was the official newspaper of Robert Mugabe. Then, this month, the staff of the Zimbabwe Herald got an impossible assignment: They would have to cover the downfall of their benefactor.

In the days after Mugabe was detained by the military, editors and reporters gathered in a wood-paneled newsroom in an old office building downtown, trying to figure out what to do.

Should they back Mugabe or the military takeover? Did they still have to echo the party line? What was the party line, anyway?

Suddenly, a newsroom that had been the mouthpiece of the regime was without a censor.

“In the past we could never criticize the president,” said Felex Share, a political reporter, in the hours before Mugabe’s resignation. “Right now, we can touch anything.”

Phyllis Kochere holds the newspaper announcing the resignation of Robert Mugabe in the newsroom of the Zimbabwe Herald. (Kevin Sieff/The Washington Post)
The rapid descent of the world’s oldest head of state came as a shock to many Zimbabweans who assumed Mugabe would rule the country until his death.

The Herald, which is owned by the government, had advanced the idea that his rule was untouchable. Until two weeks ago, the paper was printing laudatory stories and editorials about the country’s despotic leader.

“President Mugabe deserves Nobel Peace Prize,” said one headline last month.

“He is undisputedly the most exceptional figure in the history of our country,” another article said in September.

The paper’s editors and reporters didn’t usually agree with those messages, but working for the Herald meant shelving your own politics. It was the best-paying newspaper in Zimbabwe, and in a country with a soaring unemployment rate, that meant something.

“It makes you feel stupid writing this stuff,” said Joram Nyathi, the paper’s deputy editor. “But you’re working for government media. You know what to expect.”

Even after Mugabe’s house arrest, the paper decided to play it safe. “Business as usual across the country,” its front-page headline said, ignoring the shock wave rippling across Zimbabwe.

Inside the newsroom, a frenzied revolution was taking place. Reporters who had for years bit their tongues while writing flattering stories saw an opening.

“It was a seismic shift for us,” Share said.

Days later, when thousands poured onto the streets of Harare to demand Mugabe’s resignation, the tenor of the paper’s coverage began to change. It started publishing straightforward news reports about the country’s swelling opposition. It sent reporters and photographers into crowds carrying anti-Mugabe signs. For the first time in decades, it gave Mugabe’s rivals a voice.

It wasn’t just the Herald that seemed to be liberalizing. Arbitrary police checkpoints vanished overnight. Foreign journalists, once heavily obstructed, could move freely (including into the Herald’s newsroom). The demonstrations themselves were unimaginable only weeks ago.

In the following days, the paper wrote front-page stories about Mugabe’s dismissal as head of the ruling party, ZANU-PF.

It covered plans by the parliament to impeach the president. It ran op-eds in support of efforts to bring Mugabe down.

“We have no doubt that the biggest winner in this fiasco are the people of Zimbabwe,” said one.

Zimbabweans started posting pictures of the Herald on Twitter and Facebook, in disbelief that the newspaper of Mugabe had suddenly abandoned him. The paper had to increase its print run to keep up with demand.

“This in the Herald. Pinch yourself — it is not April Fools Day,” tweeted David Coltart, a former senator and member of the opposition, after the paper covered Mugabe’s dismissal from the party.

It wasn’t just that the Herald was eager to seize a rare moment of press freedom. Its senior editors were also trying to sort out who was likely to emerge from the country’s political chaos — so they knew which horse to back.

“You don’t want to step on the wrong toes,” said Phyllis Kochere, the deputy news editor.

On Tuesday, the paper sent its parliamentary reporter, Farirai Machivenyika, to cover a session in which lawmakers were expected to begin protracted impeachment proceedings. About an hour into the session, Machivenyika watched as the speaker of the house stood up with a piece of paper in his hand, a smile spreading across his face.

The speaker began to read a resignation letter written by Mugabe. Machivenyika took frantic notes. Like many of the Herald’s reporters, he was born after Mugabe assumed power in 1980. He could hardly believe he was about to file a story about the president’s resignation.

He thought to himself: “This is what relief feels like.”

The next day, the Herald ran the words “Ta Ta, Cde President” on the front page, with the full text of Mugabe’s resignation letter. In an editorial, the paper wrote: “Last night was a new beginning for Zimbabwe.”

In the morning, the newspaper’s staff gathered for the news meeting, its first of the post-Mugabe era.

Nyathi looked around at the other editors and reporters and muttered under his breath, “Well, what do I do now?”

For about an hour the staff debated what had just happened to their country and what was going to come next.

“There’s a need for a coalition government,” said Ruth Butaumocho, the gender editor.

“If ZANU-PF thinks it will lead the country alone, they will continue just like Mugabe,” said one editor.

“We need to come up with an objective analysis of the trajectory the country’s politics is going to take,” another said.

“Things are changing every hour,” Kochere said.

“We need more stories!” yelled Nyathi.

That day, the major story line was the return of the soon-to-be president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had been in exile for several weeks since being fired as vice president. No one — not even the paper’s reporters — was sure how the Herald would cover it.

Would Mnangagwa get the same kind of flattering coverage Mugabe had received for so many years? Would the Herald continue its streak of more objective reporting?

That night, Mnangagwa’s speech veered into the anti-opposition rhetoric Mugabe had often used. “Those who oppose us will bark and bark,” he said. “They will continue to bark, but the ZANU-PF train will roll on, ruling and ruling while they bark.”

It was exactly the kind of language many of the Herald’s top reporters and editors had expressed concern about, a sign Mnangagwa had no interest in forming a broad coalition.

The paper didn’t cover that angle. Instead, it published positive news stories and editorials, including one on the front page under the headline “President needs our maximum support.”

Had the paper’s brief window of freedom closed? Back in the newsroom, opinions were divided.

“Like any other media business, we are expected to toe the owner’s line,” Kochere said.

Share was more optimistic.

“There are no sacred cows now,” he said.

In the front entrance of the Herald, the portrait of Mugabe had already been taken down, leaving a slightly discolored rectangle on the wall where it once hung. The newsroom looked like any other — with piles of yellowing paper atop desks, clusters of reporters discussing their stories, editors trying to plan the day’s coverage.

Kochere looked through a list of story pitches in the center of the room. Outside, a crowd was waiting for Mnangagwa to arrive at the president’s office, waiting to hear what he would say on the eve of his inauguration.

Kochere sighed. She had been at the paper for 17 years. She knew the Herald as well as she knew Zimbabwean politics.

“I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed,” she said. “It’s a divided nation.”