Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s refusal to publicly resign is stalling plans by the military to swiftly install a transitional government after seizing power on Wednesday, two people familiar with the situation said yesterday.
The military wants Mugabe, who is under house arrest, to agree to step aside so it can claim its action is not a coup and head off tension with the Southern African Development Community, which includes Zimbabwe and South Africa, the people said.
The group previously intervened when the army took over in Lesotho.
Photo: Reuters
Father Fidelis Mukonori, a prominent Catholic priest, is mediating talks with Mugabe, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Mugabe, 93, is a Catholic and went to a Jesuit school.
The new rulers, headed by Zimbabwean Armed Forces Commander Constantino Chiwenga, plan to try and negotiate the establishment of a transitional government with the opposition until elections can be held to restore stability, the people said.
However, first they want a deal with Mugabe, whose 37-year rule left an economy that has halved in size since 2000, a severe cash shortage that is choking businesses and a collapse in government services.
The military has declined to comment on its plans.
“The military, or the people who are now in charge, obviously they have some respect for Mugabe — he is someone who has led them for so many years,” Alex Magaisa, a Zimbabwean law lecturer who helped design the nation’s 2013 constitution, said in a interview with Bloomberg Television in London.
“I think there is still some residual sympathy for him,” Magaisa said. “They wouldn’t want to be seen to be mistreating him.”
The operation to take power had been planned for weeks, but was accelerated after Mugabe fired Zimbabwean vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa, the people said.
Mugabe’s wife, Grace, 52, said days later that she was prepared to succeed her husband.
Mnangagwa, who fled the nation, is allied with the military, while Grace Mugabe heads the so-called Generation-40 faction of mainly younger politicians who did not fight in the liberation war against the white-minority regime of Rhodesia.
Grace on occasion publicly criticized war veterans.
The military decided to intervene after the ruling party on Tuesday called Chiwenga’s public criticism of Mnangagwa’s dismissal “treasonous.”
Opposition leaders and political allies Angola and China were given some warning, the people said.
Mnangagwa is the leading contender to head a transitional government, which could include members of the opposition.
It might also include former Zimbabwean minister of finance Patrick Chinamasa, who was fired last month, and Joice Mujuru, who established her own political party after Robert Mugabe dismissed her as Zimbabwean vice president in December 2014, said Theophilus Acheampong, a risk analyst at IHS Markit.
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