Zimbabwe is currently heating,there has been a coup d’etat by the military.
President Robert Mugabe, who has been in power since 1980, is in custody. The military however guarantees his safety, including that of his family. On the evening of Tuesday, 14 November 2017, elements of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces gathered around Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe and seized control of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation and other areas of the city.
Problems started In the first week of October 2017, tensions between the Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Grace Mugabe, two leading figures to replace the 93-year old Robert Mugabe as President of Zimbabwe were prominently displayed in the public sphere.
Vice President Mnangagwa, a protege of Mugabe’s who had been his ally since the Zimbabwe War of Independence in the 1970s,said that doctors had confirmed that he had been poisoned during an August 2017 political rally led by the president and had to be airlifted to a hospital in South Africa for treatment.
Grace Mugabe denied the poisoning claims as ridiculous and rhetorically asked “Who is Mnangagwa, who is he?”Phelekezela Mphoko, the other Vice President of Zimbabwe publicly criticized Mnangagwa, saying that his comments about the August incident were part of an attempt to weaken the country, the power of the president, and divide ZANU-PF, since doctors had actually concluded that stale food was to blame.
On October 6, 2017, Grace Mugabe, went off-script from a planned speech in Harare to attack Mnangagwa, saying that her supporters were constantly receiving threats that if Mnangagwa did not succeed Mugabe, they would be killed, and that the faction backing Mnangagwa was plotting a coup d’état. At a rally on November 4, Grace Mugabe referred to Mnangagwa as a “coup plotter” and Mugabe publicly rebuked him.
On November 6, Mugabe fired Mnangagwa. A statement from Information Minister Simon Khaya Moyo, said that Mnangagwa had “consistently and persistently exhibited traits of disloyalty, disrespect, deceitfulness and unreliability. Mnangagwa fled the country, and more than a hundred of Mnangagwa’s alleged senior supporters were targeted for disciplinary sanctions by backers of Grace Mugabe. On Tuesday 14th November, armoured vehicles were spotted on roadways in the capital of Zimbabwe. Early Wednesday morning, military spokesperson Major General SB Moyo issued a statement on the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation saying that, it isn’t a military takeover and President Mugabe was safe. However the statement also said that the military was “targeting criminals” around Mugabe responsible for the country’s socio-economic problems, and that after they achieved their aims, the situation would “return to normalcy.”
After the speech, the military arrested Ignatius Chombo, the Zimbabwean finance minister and a leader of the pro-Grace Mugabe G40 faction of the ZANU-PF party.
Both the American and British embassies in Harare have issued warnings to stay inside because of the military activity in the city.
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