A smiling President Robert Mugabe has been pictured shaking hands with Zimbabwe’s military chief a day after the army seized power, throwing confusion over predictions that the 93-year-old’s nearly four-decade rule had come to an end.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe made his first public appearance on Thursday, a day after the military appeared to have taken control of the government.
The official Herald newspaper late Thursday published pictures of Mugabe meeting Zimbabwe Defense Forces chief Constantino Chiwenga and South African envoys at State House.
The meeting was also attended by defense minister Sydney Sekeramayi and state security minister Kembo Mohadi.
Mr Mugabe unexpectedly drove from his lavish Blue Roof compound in Harare — where he had been confined since troops took to the streets — to State House where official media pictured him meeting military chief Constantino Chiwenga and South African ministers sent to mediate the crisis.
The official Herald newspaper carried no reports of the outcome of the meeting, leaving Zimbabwe’s 13 million people in the dark as to what was happening as night fell on Thursday.
Mr Mugabe is insisting he remains Zimbabwe’s only legitimate ruler and is refusing to quit, but pressure was mounting on the former guerrilla to accept offers of a graceful exit, sources have said.
Zimbabwe has fallen into a dreadful state during Robert Mugabe’s tenure, costing millions of people the opportunity to work, learn, and enjoy good health. His swift departure would be no guarantee that life would get any better.
Earlier, a political source who spoke to senior allies holed up in the compound with Mr Mugabe and his wife Grace said he had no plans to resign voluntarily ahead of elections due next year.
“It’s a sort of stand-off, a stalemate … they are insisting the president must finish his term,” one source said.
The army’s takeover signalled the collapse in less than 36 hours of the security, intelligence and patronage networks that sustained Mugabe through 37 years in power and built him into the Grand Old Man of African politics.
A priest mediating between Mr Mugabe and the generals, who seized power on Wednesday in what they called a targeted operation against “criminals” in Mr Mugabe’s entourage — has reportedly made little headway, a senior political source said.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai also joined calls for Mr Mugabe’s departure overnight “in the interest of the people” — in a statement read to reporters, Mr Tsvangirai pointedly referred to him as Mr Robert Mugabe, not President Mugabe.
The army may want Mr Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, to go quietly and allow a smooth and bloodless transition to Emmerson Mnangagwa, the vice-president Mr Mugabe sacked last week triggering the political crisis.
At the centre of the crisis currently gripping Zimbabwe is Robert Mugabe’s wife Grace. Find out who she is and how she got to the position she’s in.
The main goal of the generals is to prevent Mr Mugabe from handing power to his wife Grace — 41 years his junior — who has built a following among the ruling party’s youth wing and appeared on the cusp of power after Mr Mnangagwa was pushed out.
The last of Africa’s state founders still in power from the era of the struggle against European colonisation, Mr Mugabe is still seen by many Africans as a liberation hero.
But he is reviled in the West as a despot whose disastrous handling of the economy and willingness to resort to violence to maintain power pauperised one of Africa’s most promising states.
A fighter, both literally and figuratively during a political career that included several assassination attempts, Mr Mugabe may now have reached the end of the road.
SEE PHOTOS BELOW:
[caption id="attachment_50477" align="alignnone" width="700"]
President Robert Mugabe poses with General Constantino Chiwenga at State House in Harare, Zimbabwe, November 16, 2017. ZIMPAPERS/Joseph Nyadzayo/Handout via REUTERS[/caption]
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