Has he gone? Or has he not? An unease settled over Zimbabweans yesterday as a ruler they had thought had been deposed re-appeared in public.
Robert Mugabe emerged from house arrest to attend, of all things, a university graduation ceremony. A yellow tassel flopped from a blue mortar board over his face.
Mr Mugabe, despite his revolutionary strongman image outside Zimbabwe, is a lawyer not a street fighter. That has not necessarily made his nearly four decades in power easier for his people. But the 93-year-old often adopts the air of a scholar.
So there was an sense of business as normal as he underlined his academic image at Zimbabwe Open University. But nothing is normal in Harare, and certainly not business.
There has, say observers on the ground, been a coup. But to coin a phrase it has been a very Zimbabwean coup. The army has made no secret of the fact it is now in control. But there are Zimbabwean niceties to be observed. Reports suggest generals had expected Mr Mugabe to go quietly. Even at his advanced age, he does not appear to want to do so.
It would be easy to think that there was no hurry in ousting the man. He cannot, after all, live forever. But this attempt to grab power - and Mr Mugabe has been forced to share power more than once in his career - is not necessarily about the man himself.
The real target of the coup was Mr Mugabe’s second wife, Grace. Her image is far closer to that of a kleptocrat. And she is younger. If her generation takes over, they could hold on to office, with all its trappings, for decades more. Unlike an older generation of leaders, South African-born Mrs Mugabe does not have the political cover of taking part in the armed struggle to end white rule in Zimbabwe.
This week’s coup was sparked by the firing Emmerson of Mnangagwa, Mr Mugabe’s vice president and a veteran. Mrs Mugabe was, insiders suggest, after his job.
One elite within Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party was struggling for control with another. Understanding who is up and who is down requires a kind Harare Kremlinology.
Who will win is not clear. Who will lose is: the people of Zimbabwe. Amid the unease, of course, there has been hope; hope that a hated despot could be toppled. Many Zimbabweans will not care how this comes about. African coups are often peaceful. Their aftermaths far from always follow that pattern.
But the priority for anyone this nation’s slow--motion coup is how his people will fare. Zimbabwe’s economy is wrecked.
A change in the personalities in its elite will not, on its own, mean much. Investors, Chinese above all, will want stability. Zimbabweans will want fairness. Those may not be compatible aspirations.
Mr Mugabe, at the university graduation, appeared to drift in and out of sleep. His people may now be waking up to a new future.
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