Zimbabwe’s presumptive leader is due to return to Harare today to replace ousted president Robert Mugabe, who resigned under pressure from his own party and the military Tuesday.
There was jubilation in Zimbabwe as the country awoke to the first day in almost four decades without the man who ruled the country with an iron fist. That joy, however, was tempered with apprehension — Mugabe is set to be replaced by his powerful former deputy, seen as equally complicit in the government’s brutality.
Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s replacement according to a spokesman for the ZANU-PF party, will arrive back in Zimbabwe Wednesday, according to multiple members of the political party. He is expected to be sworn in by Thursday. He has not been seen in the country since being dismissed as vice president on November 6 and had previously said that he wouldn’t return until his safety was guaranteed.
Many in Zimbabwe and in the international community are hoping that it will be a transitional arrangement; the country’s next general elections are scheduled for 2018.
Mnangagwa’s dismissal, apparently to pave the way for Mugabe’s wife Grace to succeed him, instead led to Mugabe’s arrest, threatened impeachment and eventual resignation.
Opposition politicians embraced the development but added that the country still needed to embrace democracy.
“We are very excited that we have gotten rid of Robert Mugabe, but we have gotten rid of one man, we have not gotten rid of the system that was oppressive for 37 years,” Douglas Mwonzora, Secretary-General of the Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai (MDC-T), Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, told CNN.
“Therefore we have to work towards conditions for free and fair elections. The Zimbabwean people still have to choose a president by themselves.”
He pointed to elections next year, which will enable his party to “have a big say in who is the next substantive president of the Republic of Zimbabwe.”
Throwback fears
Known as “The Crocodile” for his tough political game, 75-year-old Mnangagwa has strong backing from the country’s elite and, in addition to being a close ally of Mugabe for almost three decades, was a key strategist for the former president.
Some say that the man set to lead Zimbabwe into a new era, replacing a nonagenarian leader who has ruled the country since its independence in 1980, is more a reminder of its past.
He’s implicated in the massacre of thousands of his countrymen in the late 1980s. He was also described by a US diplomat as a “wildly feared and politically even more repressive leader than Mugabe.”
The politicians in line to replace Mugabe “are not good” men, Stephen Chan, a professor of international relations at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, wrote for CNN.
“Mugabe might be gone, but the transition from ‘Mugabeism’ — insofar as it has come to stand for power-hungriness and economic acquisition, for immediate gratification as opposed to long-term planning and investment, for elite lifestyles rather than equity for the citizen body — will be extremely difficult.
“The chances of a radical transformation remain small.”
Celebrations in parliament, on the street
Harare had largely returned to normal Wednesday morning. Commuters and students filed in to offices, businesses and schools, and the streets outside of parliament — scenes of jubilation just hours earlier — were once again empty.
Hours earlier, crowds had erupted in rapturous celebrations, dancing and cheering in joy, raising their fists and waving Zimbabwean flags after the speaker of Zimbabwe’s parliament read out Mugabe’s resignation letter. The impeachment proceedings were immediately suspended.
At the intersection of Julius Nyerere Way and Robert Mugabe Road in the capital, Harare, the eponymous street sign was taken down by people who were cheering the president’s resignation.
“I am just happy that I did not protest in vain,” Joe Gomo, who was on hand to witness the celebrations, said. “Finally, Mugabe is gone. Harare has never looked so beautiful and joyous.”
In South Africa, Zimbabwe’s neighbor to the south, hundreds of people flooded Johannesburg’s city center, reacting joyfully to the news of the long-time dictator’s departure.
Hope
Zimbabwean opposition politician Roy Bennett told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that the scenes on the street had filled him with hope for the country’s future although he said he was cynical about the motives of Mnangagwa and Constantine Chiwenga, the incoming leaders of the ZANU-PF party.
“Never before have I been more proud to be Zimbabwean… never again will there be a dictatorship in Zimbabwe,” he said.
He says that the events of the past two weeks, put in motion by internecine power struggles within the ruling ZANU-PF politicians, has “let the genie out the bottle.”
He said that political strife of the last two weeks had allowed people to express their feelings.
Almost four decades of rule by Mugabe and his party has left large sections of the public distrustful. “They hate ZANU-PF. They hate Emmerson Mnangagwa and Constantine Chiwenga… the rank-and-file of the military hate their leaders.”
“There are no words to explain what the people of Zimbabwe have suffered.”
Calls for change from abroad
The Chairman of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, welcomed Mugabe’s decision to step down, saying the decision “will go down in history as an act of statesmanship that can only bolster President Mugabe’s political legacy,” in a statement released by the African Union.
It added that it “looks forward to Zimbabwe continuing to play a leading role in the affairs of the African continent, as a democratic and prosperous state meeting the aspirations of its people.”
Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, also heralded the dictator’s standing down and urged the country to “establish proper conditions for free and fair elections to take place and to transition to an inclusive, peaceful constitutional democracy,” a statement reads.
UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson added his voice to calls for democratic reform. “What we need to see now is free, fair democratic elections, and above all not a transition from one despotic rule to another,” Johnson said in a televised statement.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Mugabe’s resignation a “historic moment” for Zimbabwe.
“We congratulate all Zimbabweans who raised their voices and stated peacefully and clearly that the time for change was overdue. Zimbabwe has an extraordinary opportunity to set itself on a new path,” a State Department statement read.