Robert Mugabe under “house arrest”
According to BBC, Zimbabwe’s socialist president Robert Mugabe has been placed under house arrest by the country’s military;
Troops are patrolling the capital, Harare, after they seized state TV and said they were targeting “criminals”.
The move may be a bid to replace Mr Mugabe with his sacked deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, BBC correspondents say.
Mr Mnangagwa’s dismissal last week left Mr Mugabe’s wife Grace as the president’s likely successor.
Heavy gun and artillery fire could be heard in northern parts of Harare early on Wednesday.
Mr Mugabe, 93, has dominated the impoverished country’s political scene since it gained independence from the UK in 1980.
The UK’s Telegraph published a statement from the Army;
“It is not a military takeover of government,” an army spokesman said in a televised statement. “We wish to assure the nation that his excellency the president… 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.
“As soon as we have accomplished our mission we expect that the situation will return to normalcy.”
They should have removed Mugabe thirty years ago, sometime before unemployment reached 90%, but better late than never.
It seems that this whole thing was an attempt to prevent Mugabe’s wife, Grace, from becoming president instead of the constitutional Vice President Mnangagwa who fled the country last week but he has returned to take office as President after the military stabilized conditions.
Category: Foreign Policy
Mugabe is Hillary’s hero. It is just that those darn Deplorables got in the way.
Mugabe was allowed to run for president originally by…. Jimmy Carter!
I remember his name being asked on the current events question on a board (E-5? SOM? Can’t remember). He’s been around a LONG time.
Close to 40 years… destroyed a country that was knows as the “breadbasket of Africa” in the name of socialism.
Well when you kick out the people who have been successfully running farms for generations and hand them over to your cronies who promptly sell the copper irrigation piping for scrap metal, that just MAY happen.
I’m convinced that people like the Clintons and the previous White House occupants look at people like Mugabe with envy of their grip on power, ditto with many a politician.
I have personally met a family that was removed from their farm in Zimbabwe and are now in South Africa. What happened in Zimbabwe was not only a crime against whites but has had a devastating effect on all Zimbabweans. Removing all the people who grow your food is not such a great idea. It is not a simple thing to produce nutricious meat and vegetables reliably and profitably. Trophy hunting used to be a big part of Zimbabwe’s income and that is now just a distant memory. Mugabe should have been sacked a very long time ago.
Every nation has the President they deserve, by action or inaction.
Dam. That sentence doesn’t make gramatical sense.
So you are saying the Jews in Poland deserved the Nazis because they didn’t fight back until too late?
I remember reading – maybe in Michener’s ‘Covenant’? – a character saying “People came to Rhodesia to see the remains of Zimbabwe. Someday they will come to Zimbabwe to see the ruins of Rhodesia.”
Not happening in this century
The question is will it get any better if Mnanangagwa does take over?
There’s not much further downhill for that country to go.
It’s a race between them and Venezuela – who can did the deeper hole?
If Hitlary had been Prez, she would be sending us to defend Mugabe.
If Commissar hadn’t been banned, he’d be lecturing us on how Zimbabwe is a post-colonial progressive utopia, Mugabe is a hero of the proletariat, etc. Rhodesia was the bread basket of Africa. Zimbabwe is a shithole that barely rates Third-World status.
Always a nice suit and tie.
Haven’t seen him sporting bling like most of
the other dictators of that continent.
I’ve seen a few picture of Mugabe blinging up the suit.
Nicolae Ceaușescu unavailable for comment.
Ceaucescu was unable to get out of his current engagement in Hell.
The people of Zimbabwe should have done the same thing to Mugabe, his wife and all his cronies. Storm the palace and hang them all.
RIP Rhodesia… “Black power”?
Agreed. Once known as “The Breadbasket” of Africa. Soon to be followed by S.A.
One of Kim Jong Un’s closest friends ousted? Great!
Emmerson Mnangagwa
This name would be a great way to really fuck with people on Wheel of Fortune.
If Claw is up on the net today, could we please get a score from the official TAH Name Scrabble (Home Version) game for Emmerson Mnangagwa?
That name should really rack up some points.
Only 28.
Not a lot of high value letters 8-(.
Africa’s answer to Marion Barry
Dictators should as a general rule not die peacefully in bed
So many have.
Stalin, Mao, Castro, Kim da One, and Kim da Two, etc…
At least some reports have Stalin lying in his own piss and shit for hours before that troll Beria found him
Stalin died of a cerebreal hemorrhage. No one was allowed to go into his room and wake him, on pain of death. So his own heinous rules and his paranoia killed him.
Karma can be quite a bitch at times.
Wonder how long before he commits suicide with two bullets to the back of the head?
Not soon enough.
I like that idea of two in the hat.
Time to raise a Merc army for the liberation of Rhodesia! 😉
Salisbury was a beautiful modern city that has fallen into post-colonial decay like the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Mugabe has reportedly resigned as president. Yeah well, far far too late – pos & his family utterly raped & pillaged what was once considered the bread basket of Africa.