As the Southern African Development Community (SADC) under the chairmanship of South African President Jacob Zuma prepared to huddle on how to navigate the ‘non-coup’ crisis in Zimbabwe, the unfolding dynamics in South Africa’s next door neighbor were anything but clear. The situation is likely to remain fluid for sometime to come and most media reports may miss what is really at stake in what may be a multi-dimensional power-struggle that has finally burst into the open. The only thing that seems clear is that Robert Mugabe’s life presidency and looming dynastic succession appears at an end. The Mugabe end-game appears finally at hand. However, the early interpretations of the military non-coup as a power-struggle an intergenerational contestation between the Group of 40 headed up by First Lady Grace Mugabe and the old-guard liberation war veterans and securocrats headed up by Emmerson Mnangagwa is at best superficial. And it should be quickly added, there are no good guys and bad guys in this unfolding drama.
Beneath the surface of the G40-Veterans struggle over the post-Mugabe sweepstakes is a likely intra-ZANU-PF inter-Shona struggle for power with implications for Shona-Ndebele relations which have always been problematic since Zimbabwean nationalism cleaved into the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU)-Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) fault-lines in the 1960s. The early reporting has had it that after fleeing to South Africa upon ouster as Mugabe’s vice-president, Mnangagwa has returned possibly to take up interim leadership of ZANU-PF pending what was suppose to be next month’s elective conference (same time as internally fraught ANC is having its elective confab to see who succeeds Zuma!). Meanwhile, negotiations are underway to determine Mugabe’s resignation as head of state and the fate of spousal pretender to his thrown, Mrs. Mugabe as her G40 co-conspirators are rounded up. With SADC and its Peace & Security ‘troika’ (chaired by Angola where former President Eduardo Dos Santos’ daughter has just been ousted from heading up Sonangol!), a confirmed military takeover of Zimbabwe is uncertain.
In any case, Zimbabwe, under Mugabe has been a de facto military dictatorship anyway following the Joint Operations Command’s qwelling of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) electoral challenge spearheaded by Morgan Tsvangarai in the 2000s. So an unconstitutional change of government in Zimbabwe is a total misreading of what is at stake. What may really be at stake is the post-Mugabe balance of forces amongst the dominant Shona ethno-lingusitic national section of Zimbabwe which comprises several subnational clans which are virtual ‘tribes’ in their own right: the Karangas (Mnangagwa), as the largest clan, dominating the military and security establishment; a hegemonic political alliance between the Zezuru (Mugabe) and the Kore Kore dominating the civilian leadership and the Manyika among other subgroups.
Within this welter of dynamics there seem to many a score to settle ever since ZANU in exile almost disintegrated following the assassination of Herbert Chitepo in Lusaka 18 March 1975. This scenarioed flash-back from the past from a Matabeleland secessionist blog may be instructive on the post-Mugabe future may hold in store:
“The Zezuru and Kore Kore would never countenance a Karanga leader for fear of retribution for the killing of Josiah Tongogara and other Karanga leaders and regaining political power given that the Karanga are the single largest ethnic group in Zimbabwe and dominate the military constituency albeit being the boots while the Karanga have resolved not to be led by Zezurus and Kore Kore again but fear retribution from the Manyika who remain bitter that the Karangas killed Herbert Chitepo and some of their leaders, yet the Manyika would produce a malleable but not electable leader amongst their number.”
In the final analysis, the liberation struggle against white minority rule in Southern Africa was not a revolutionary movement. The sorting out of the region’s ethnic and sub-ethnic pluralism, especially in South Africa as well as in Zimbabwe, was deferred until the first half of the 21st century. Of course, this sorting out is now much more complicated as inter-generational class dynamics interacting with external forces enter the picture. But the pre-colonial and pre-liberation power-struggles of yesteryear are still in play. As far as the post-Mugabe unfolding in Zimbabwe is concerned: stay tuned!
