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“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

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Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

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Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

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… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / The Coup Du Jour: Zimbabwe Edition

The Coup Du Jour: Zimbabwe Edition

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(Punch Cartoon by Bud Handelsman*)

There appears to be a soft coup going on in Zimbabwe. Specifically no shots have been fired and no one has been killed (as far as I can tell from the reporting). There are few if any troops on the street. Mugabe has been confined at home and there is a push to remove his wife from the chain of succession. And the recently ousted Vice President, Emerson Mnangagwa, has returned to Zimbabwe.

One of the ways that you know a coup is happening is:

From The Guardian:

Robert Mugabe remains in detention at his home in Zimbabwe more than 12 hours after the military declared on national television that it had temporarily taken control of the country to “target criminals” around the head of state.

The move by the armed forces appears to have resolved a bitter battle to succeed the 93-year-old president, which had pitted his former vice-president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, against Mugabe’s wife, Grace.

Mnangagwa was reported to have returned to Zimbabwe on Tuesday evening from South Africa, where he fled last week after being stripped of his office by Mugabe in an apparent attempt to clear Grace Mugabe’s path to power.

The military takeover comes two days after the army chief – flanked by other senior officers – said he was prepared to “step in” to end turmoil in the ruling Zanu-PF party.

It is likely to signal the departure from power of the world’s oldest leader within days, weeks or at most months.

One high-profile opposition leader said there was “a lot of talking going on”, with the army reaching out to them to discuss the formation of a transitional government after Mugabe steps down.

Negotiations had been ongoing for several months with “certain people within the army”, a second senior opposition official said.

The official said Mugabe would resign this week and be replaced by Mnangagwa, with opposition leaders taking posts as vice-president and prime minister. There was no independent confirmation of his claim.

In its other reporting, The Guardian has also confirmed that Grace Mugabe has fled Zimbabwe for Namibia.

The questions now are will this remain largely non-violent and can a government emerge from the soft coup that is considered to have at least de facto legitimacy even if it doesn’t have de jure legitimacy?

* This is one of my favorite Punch Cartoons. Handelsman did a great job capturing the insane type of announcements often made when a coup is actually undertaken.

Reader Interactions

91Comments

  1. 1.

    TenguPhule

    The Guardian has also confirmed that Grace Mugabe has fled Zimbabwe for Namibia.

    If there is any justice in this world, she’ll get what she deserves.

    And get it good and hard.

  2. 2.

    Ohio Mom

    This is off-topic but I just saw that Richard Cordray resigned from that federal consumer protection board — I hope this means he’s going to run for Ohio governor. Please, please, I want a Democratic candidate who can win.

  4. 4.

    Spanky

    the military declared on national television that it had temporarily taken control of the country to “target criminals” around the head of state.

    Say! We have that exact same problem!

    US military need not apply, though, please.

  5. 5.

    Adam L Silverman

    @TenguPhule: Maybe you’d like to combine things with the previous post and explain that this should, perhaps, be a 2nd Amendment type of solution?

  6. 6.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Spanky: That’s exactly I was thinking, what is the probability of a coup here. Thought experiment: What will the generals do after they have wrested the football from you know who, as many are hoping that they will.

  7. 7.

    khead

    Re: UCLA, Trump, etc.

    I, for one, applaud our POTUS for taking the time to secure the release of a bunch of shoplifters before leaving Jina. Once upon a time I stole the Coors beer banners from the local beer distributor and I am pretty sure that GWB41 would’ve left me hanging if I had been caught.

  9. 9.

    Immanentize

    It is not a coup! It is not a coup! We are just safeguarding the President and his wife from, well, the country. And vice versa….

  10. 10.

    trollhattan

    Mugabe has been their Trump since 1980, so it’s not like this is necessarily a bad thing for the country but nobody can assure he won’t be replaced with somebody/thing even worse. Good luck, Zimbabwe!

  13. 13.

    TenguPhule

    @Adam L Silverman: I think you mixed me up with a different commentor.

    Shooting is much too good for her.

    I want her worked till her hands bleed and fed exactly what the average person got to eat under the Muga’s rule. A handful of cornmeal a day for the rest of her short life.

  16. 16.

    Betty Cracker

    @trollhattan: Yeah. Went to school with a guy from there, who eventually returned. Things are pretty bad there, from what I hear. Here’s hoping it gets better.

  17. 17.

    TenguPhule

    @schrodingers_cat:

    What will the generals do after they have wrested the football from you know who, as many are hoping that they will.

    “Why do we need to listen to these civilian bozos again? We can just TAKE what we want! After all, who’s gonna stop us?”

  20. 20.

    germy

    Guns are not allowed in the U.S. Capitol and every congressman has Obamacare…in case you're wondering how these people really feel.— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) November 7, 2017

  21. 21.

    Calouste

    Pro tip for the Mugabes: authoritarianism is almost by definition male-chauvinistic, and the number of non-royal female dictators in history is pretty much zero.

  22. 22.

    The Moar You Know

    It is not a coup! It is not a coup! We are just safeguarding the President and his wife from, well, the country. And vice versa….

    @Immanentize: Zimbabwe has needed safeguarding from Mugabe for a long, long time. But I don’t think this is going to be the result of this coup.

    President-to-be-installed Mnangagwa better be in good with the army (sure looks that way) or he’s not going to be president for long. Of course, he really is inheriting the world’s shittiest job. I’d like to be dictator just as much as the next guy, but Zimbabwe is too much of a mess for that offer to have any appeal at all.

  23. 23.

    joel hanes

    The caption for that cartoon is the official slogan of Obsidian Wings, a historically-great blog with a moderated comment section.
    I’d never seen the actual cartoon before.

  25. 25.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Adam L Silverman: Rome was a Republic once. I did not think that the current President would be elected. Never I told everyone with 100% confidence.

    ETA: Hoping you are right, of course, but I don’t have the confidence that I did before last November.

  26. 26.

    germy

    I was telling my wife today, I know we complain about Bush, drumpf, etc., but can you imagine 37 years of them?

    Mugabe was planning on putting his wife in charge.

    Here, it would be like drumpf ruled for three decades and then gave the presidency to one of his sons.

  27. 27.

    Yarrow

    I heard this morning they call her “Gucci Grace” for her expensive tastes and lavish spending of the country’s money. I saw a photo of her and she does not look anywhere close in age to her husband who is 93. She could be in charge for a long time if she were to take power.

  35. 35.

    Immanentize

    @germy: I agree. It was not surprising to me that both Ceausescu and his wife ended up, well, not alive after the revolution. Then, the first act the new government took was to ban the death penalty…. Nice touch, I always thought.

  47. 47.

    germy

    People are suggesting I write about Roy Moore's lawyer's threat letter. Write what? How would I begin? Would you footnote a sunset over the water? Would you airbrush a rose? That letter is the Mona Lisa of unselfconscious imbecility.— Sign Popehat's Yearbook (@Popehat) November 15, 2017

  48. 48.

    rikyrah

    @Ohio Mom:

    This is off-topic but I just saw that Richard Cordray resigned from that federal consumer protection board — I hope this means he’s going to run for Ohio governor. Please, please, I want a Democratic candidate who can win.

    I am hoping Kay will have news for us on this front.

  49. 49.

    Yarrow

    @rikyrah: Kay posted about this in one of the threads downstairs. She’s excited but since he hasn’t officially declared or anything it’s just buzz right now.

  53. 53.

    rikyrah

    Subtle indication there may be a coup: your news anchor is suddenly this guy, telling you it’s totally not a coup. pic.twitter.com/lKOX5uQGnW

    — Carl Fridh Kleberg (@FridhKleberg) November 15, 2017

    That was a funny tweet

  54. 54.

    Brachiator

    Mugabe’s wife supposedly was behind the ouster of an earlier vice-president. And there had recently been an attempt to purge military veterans, perhaps in an attempt to head off a coup.

    The Zanu-PF party seemed to be solidly behind Mugabe and his wife. Don’t know if there will be a hard push back against the military.

  61. 61.

    Spanky

    TenguPhule says:
    November 15, 2017 at 3:19 pm

    @Yarrow: She’s 52.

    Adam L Silverman says:
    November 15, 2017 at 3:28 pm

    @Yarrow: She’s 50.

    OK. That tears it. I demand to see her long-form birth certificate.

  65. 65.

    NotMax

    @Immanentize

    Ironic, innit, that historians disagree on the precise wording Churchill used about who writes the histories?

    Couple of other relevant citations. First, George Orwell.

    In the last analysis our only claim to victory is that if we win the war we shall tell fewer lies about it than our adversaries. The really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits ‘atrocities’ but that it attacks the concept of objective truth; it claims to control the past as well as the future. In spite of all the lying and self-righteousness that war encourages, I do not honestly think it can be said that that habit of mind is growing in Britain. Taking one thing with another, I should say that the press is slightly freer than it was before the war. I know out of my own experience that you can print things now which you couldn’t print ten years ago. War resisters have probably been less maltreated in this war than in the last one, and the expression of unpopular opinion in public is certainly safer. There is some hope, therefore, that the liberal habit of mind, which thinks of truth as something outside yourself, something to be discovered, and not as something you can make up as you go along, will survive. But I still don’t envy the future historian’s job. Is it not a strange commentary on our time that even the casualties in the present war cannot be estimated within several millions? Source

    “The history of a nation is, unfortunately, too easily written as the history of its dominant class.”
      – Kwame Nkrumah

  66. 66.

    germy

    I read somewhere that drumpf is holding off on offering an opinion on Moore until after he hears what hannity has to say. No joke.

  72. 72.

    Adam L Silverman

    Anyone got any idea what the President is actually doing with this address about his trip? Other than he needed an ego boost so the staff arranged to stick him in front of the cameras so he could break his arm patting himself on the back taking credit for things he largely has no control over, no involvement with, or both.

  73. 73.

    germy

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Asked about Moore having allegedly asked mothers for permission to date their daughters, Trenton Garmon decided to invoke the “background” of Ali Velshi, one of the MSNBC hosts interviewing him.

    “That’s a good question,” Garmon began. “And culturally speaking, I would say there’s differences. I looked up Ali’s background there, and wow that’s awesome that you have got such a diverse background. That’s really cool to read through that.”

    It got no better from there.

    When Velshi’s co-host, Stephanie Ruhle, asked what Velshi’s background had to do with the matter at hand, Garmon offered: “In other countries, there’s arrangement through parents for what we would refer to as consensual marriage.”

    Ruhle noted twice that her brown-skinned co-host is from Canada. But Garmon, undeterred, pressed on: “And Ali’s also spent time in other countries … so it’s not a bad thing.”

    Velshi is of Indian descent, but he was born in Kenya and grew up in Canada, after his family reportedly made brief stops in Pakistan, England and New York City, according to a 2009 profile in the Toronto Star. Garmon seemed to be referring to the tradition of arranged marriages in India, where Velshi has never lived.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/11/15/roy-moores-bizarre-attorney-steps-forward-to-offer-bizarre-defense-of-roy-moore/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_fix-moore-attorney-230pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.bb318cb3af4e

  77. 77.

    germy

    @schrodingers_cat:

    a greater than 5 year difference gets a side eye.

    So the lawyer babbling about arranged marriages really doesn’t make any sense.

    His letter is full of typos and bad grammar, so at least he’s got that going for him.

  87. 87.

    Hovercraft

    My Mother spent most of today calling people in Harare and Bulawayo, everyone is pleased so far and pretty calm. They feel that Mnanagwa gave all the necessary assurances to South Africa and China, (the Chinese basically own Zimbabwe, that’s how Mugabe kept himself afloat with all the sanctions). People are nervous, but figure it can hardly get any worse, and maybe they’ll get better. Fingers crossed, its such a beautiful country, and they deserve so much better. Pretty much everyone expects there to be very little changed when they wake up tomorrow, they are glad that at the very least Grace and her children will not be taking over, the new crew may be part of the same corrupt ruling party, but they may lead the country in a new direction. I guess we’ll see.

  88. 88.

    MattF

    @germy: Trump is a coward. Period.

    In other news, I’ll note that the Army guys appearing on TV all look well-dressed and well-fed. I’m sure they did OK under Mugabe, and I’m sure they’ll do well under his successor. I don’t actually have any other predictions.

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