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Mugabe unexpectedly drove on Thursday from his lavish “Blue Roof” compound, where he had been confined, to State House, where official media pictured him meeting military boss Constantino Chiwenga and South African mediators. The official Herald newspaper carried no reports of the meeting’s outcome, leaving Zimbabwe’s 13 million people in the dark about the situation. In an interview with Reuters, acting U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Donald Yamamoto appeared to dismiss the idea of Mugabe remaining in a transitional or ceremonial role. “It’s a transition to a new era for Zimbabwe, that’s really what we’re hoping for,” Yamamoto said.
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The army may want Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, to go quietly and allow a smooth and bloodless transition to Emmerson Mnangagwa, the vice president Mugabe sacked last week, triggering the crisis. The main goal of the generals is to prevent Mugabe from handing power to his wife, Grace, 41 years his junior, who has built a following among the ruling party’s youth wing and appeared on the cusp of power after Mnangagwa was pushed out.
'Some sort of agreement'
Mugabe, who at 93 has appeared increasingly frail in public, is insisting he remains Zimbabwe’s only legitimate ruler and is refusing to quit. But pressure was mounting on the former guerrilla to accept offers of a graceful exit, political sources said.Also Read - Mugabe: The last of Africa’s ‘fathers of independence’
Zimbabwe’s former head of intelligence, Dumiso Dabengwa, was to hold a news conference in Johannesburg at 1200 GMT. A South African government source said he expected Dabengwa, a close ally of the ousted Mnangagwa, to discuss the events in Zimbabwe. “It seems there is some sort of agreement,” the source said. The army’s takeover signaled the collapse in less than 36 hours of the security, intelligence and patronage networks that sustained Mugabe through almost four decades in power and built him into the “Grand Old Man” of African politics.
