
Zimbabwe's Military in Apparent Takeover, Says It Has Custody of President - dingoonline
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/14/world/africa/zimbabwe-mugabe-mnangagwa-chiwenga.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
======
gaius
Pre-Mugabe Zimbabwe was known as "the breadbasket of Africa" for the
productivity of its farms. Mugabe brought economic collapse and famine, while
living a life of luxury and stashing billions overseas. Hopefully whoever
comes next will be a better leader.

~~~
zimzim
It was a different country. how well can ex-slaves and bushman run a country?
democracy is not rooted in every culture, greed is :\

EDIT: just to be clear not every person in charge is ex-slave or something,
but as a country even if they started financially strong it does not mean they
had the culture to support it

~~~
pjc50
Ah, colonialism. Construct a system designed to prevent people from having
autonomy or self-governance while shipping their value overseas, then smear
them as primitives when they take over and have difficulty with autonomy.

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zimzim
background: President is old and have succession problems. In recent years his
wife trying to grab more and more power to be the next president but not
everyone in the ruling party like that. last week she (from the mouth of the
president) fired "number 2" in the country. since then everyone who was
"friend" with number 2 was fired too. when they tried to get rid of the army
general (friend of number 2) he refused to leave his office in claim that
president wife doing undemocratic things. yesterday he did the "takeover". its
not yet clear if the president will switched with the number 2 guy (the friend
of the general).

~~~
erikb
Really interested to read more about this. This is really the most critical
point of the succession question: Who can get the military to follow him. Both
the highest general and the government leader have strong claims for military
leadership and there is no pure logical answer if highest general and
government leader don't agree. All depends on what happens between the
different parties.

~~~
Flenser
There's a good summary here: [https://www.thezimbabwean.co/2017/11/standoff-
zimbabwe-strug...](https://www.thezimbabwean.co/2017/11/standoff-zimbabwe-
struggle-succeed-mugabe-deepens/)

From today: listen to this from around 8:10 (it starts at 6am, so skip to
2:10)
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09drjhz](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09drjhz)

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felipelemos
It's good to remember that he is in power since 1980. Calling a dictator as a
President doesn't make him one. And this doesn't make the takeover good or
bad, btw.

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thisisit
"While denying that the military had seized power, they said that Mr. Mugabe
and his family “are safe and sound, and their security is guaranteed.”

“We are only targeting criminals _around him_ who are committing crimes that
are causing social and economic suffering in the country in order to bring
them to justice,"

This doesn't look good.

~~~
lb1lf
According to (whoever controls...) the official Zanu-PF twitter account,
Robert Mugabe and his wife has been detained.

The former vice president, Mnangagwa (who was sacked by Mugabe last week, so
that his wife Grace could take the #2 spot) is acting president, according to
an army statement.

Also, reports of gun and artillery fire from northern Harare - the district
where Mugabe and his cronies live.

Also, predictably, the army claims this is not a coup, and that they are
merely acting to preserve the constitution and the republic. (That being said,
if one is to stage a coup somewhere, one could find a less deserving country
than Zimbabwe; let's just hope the army has the good sense to hand over power
to civilian authorities ASAP.)

~~~
tasssko
I know people that live in northern Harare and they haven't heard any gun and
artillery fire. They live within a 3-5km radius of RM and his cronies also
they haven't seen any tanks - yet. All very curious, but something is up.

~~~
gaius
According to Wikipedia, Zimbabwe's army has no serviceable tanks.

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NaliSauce
Shouldn't he have been removed quite some time ago for violating the UN
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide?

~~~
yorwba
Removed by whom?

~~~
NaliSauce
I suppose that's one of the UNs weakness in that they lack the ability to
enforce a lot of conventions.

~~~
netsharc
A world government with a force would be an interesting concept. Corrupt
African states has lead to their citizens fleeing to Europe with EU solutions
being band-aids like giving Libyan coast guard ships and money to prevent the
ships from leaving Libyan waters, the better solution would be to fix
corruption and help development in the refugees' home countries, but the EU
governments can't do that, can they (giving the governments money would just
mean the leaders would be able to afford a new villa and a few more Mercedes
Benzes).

~~~
pizza
How many Libyans go to Europe by boat..?

~~~
pjc50
Quite a lot: [http://www.euronews.com/2017/06/26/more-than-30-migrant-
boat...](http://www.euronews.com/2017/06/26/more-than-30-migrant-boats-left-
libya-for-europe-on-sunday-keith-walker)

Not all of them make it. The vessels aren't particularly seaworthy, and
they're not allowed to dock, so effectively they dump their passengers in open
boats and rely on the coastguard rescuing them and taking them to Italian
soil.

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vuyani
I wish our neighbors well! its been a long time over due.I really hope it will
be a peaceful transition, as SA has their own problems they need to deal
with(cANCer)! We cannot have a refugee crisis and a civil war on our borders

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partycoder
Robert Mugabe has been president of Zimbabwe since 1987. That is, 30 years.

~~~
igitur
And initially he was a very good leader. But lately, if you listen to his
speeches, he is downright senile. And he can hardly walk on his own. That's
why the general convention of serving a maximum of 2 or 3 terms is so
important.

~~~
thisisit
As they say - Either you die (or step down in this case) a hero or live long
enough to see yourself become the villain.

There are multiple cases in developing countries where the family/friends
takes over in case of someone powerful going senile.

~~~
steve19
> Either you die (or step down in this case) a hero or live long enough to see
> yourself become the villain.

Evil is a choice, not a consequence of time. He destroyed that country, at the
expense of the poor and to the profit of his cronys.

I wonder if this will impact North Korea. Zimbabwe is a major source of hard
currency in exchange for weapons.

~~~
microcolonel
> _I wonder if this will impact North Korea. Zimbabwe is a major source of
> hard currency in exchange for weapons._

I smell CIA. :- )

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i_feel_great
These African countries always remind me of Darwin's Nightmare[0]. There is an
interview with Raphael at 1:20:41 in which he says he wants a war because he
can earn more money then.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcnTWAyzhbg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcnTWAyzhbg)

------
WillReplyfFood
A new strong man will appear. He will talk about a fresh start, a new aera,
the press will celebrate him, his followers will demand part of the loot-
transparency iternational celebrates his existance, the cycle goes on and on.

------
forapurpose
There have been several coups or other undemocratic assumptions of power
recently: Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, China (Xi seems to have made himself
dictator-for-life), Turkey, and to a degree in Japan, in at least one Eastern
European country, and even in France (which AFAIK now has an indefinite state
of emergency curtailing rights of citizens).

I wonder how much and in what way they are related to the U.S. changing its
long-standing policy from being the guarantor of international order, and from
being an advocate for democracy as a universal right. Some examples in my list
started before the current US policy went into effect, but perhaps the US is
accelerating a trend, merely responding to it, or even taking an active hand
(during the Cold War the US played an active role in such things, from
Congo/Zaire to Chile to Iran to Indonesia to many other places). Perhaps
others are taking active hands now that the US is out of the picture (to a
significant degree) as guarantor.

That trend, away from democracy, is very serious and is the headline here for
me. Generations fought, struggled and died to establish the legacy of
democracy and human rights that we inherited; what are we building for the
next generation? It feels like we are just gambling away the family
inheritance.

~~~
mrpopo
First of all, please don't call the U.S. the "guarantor of international
order". It sounds as if the U.S. were a benefactor to the world. It is not, it
has been all political alliances and power-play. Sometimes the U.S. backed
democratic leaders, sometimes not (c.f. Pinochet, Park Chung Hee...).

Second, I myself consider the degradation of the current state of affairs in
the world to be due to the global slowdown of economic growth. Less growth
means less disposable income, means more social unrest and the rise of
autocraty to maintain order.

~~~
lgbr
While the US often acts reprehensibly, such as in the case of Chile, Iraq, and
so on, the overwhelming majority of the international influence the US exerts
is positive. The entire stability of Europe, Japan, South Korea (although Park
Chung Hee was a dictator), and a handful of other countries was built by the
US government. Counter-examples are easy to list, but somehow the more
numerous positive examples are forgotten.

And what are you basing the "global slowdown of economic growth" on? Gross
World Product has been growing at around 3% since the second world war, and
hasn't slowed down recently at all:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product)
And particularly, Africa is growing faster than anywhere else.

~~~
badosu
> _While the US often acts reprehensibly, such as in the case of Chile, Iraq,
> and so on, the overwhelming majority of the international influence the US
> exerts is positive._ (Citation Needed)

Please see:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change)

~~~
lgbr
I cited examples right after where you cut off the quote.

~~~
badosu
To say that something is majority, you need to compare with the minority,
minority was not provided.

Although I recognize a HN post can't possibly be able to enumerate and compare
the magnitude of all possible ways the US influenced the world and tell
objectively if it added more benefit than harm.

How did the US improve the stability of Middle East on the 1953 Coup d'Etat of
Iran? Supporting Taliban in the 80s?

How helping overthrow (lots) of elected governments in South and Central
America help them?

How is it that the US is a democracy champion but is more than happy to
support cruel and corrupt military or religious dictatorships for it's own
benefit? How does that help the world?

Are you really taking into account the implications of these actions and how
they helped shape the current stage on your benefit-harm balance?

