End of Mugabe’s Regime and the Beginning of a New Mugabean Regime

The army ousted Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, on 14 November 2017, and installed his erstwhile associate Emmerson Mnangagwa as the new President. The prime movers of the new regime argued that Mugabe’s exit would guarantee economic recovery and restoration of democratic norms in the country. However, the new government is a populist paradox. It is opposed to imperialism as much as it is an antithesis to the concepts of democracy and human rights.

On 19 November 2017, Robert Mugabe, the only President Zim­babweans had known since independence in 1980, wrote a poignant open letter to the “Black Zimbabwean citizens” of his country. It reminded the “fellow Black Zimbabweans” of how he has always been the front runner of the social and economic empowerment of blacks in Zimbabwe by making them the real owners of their land and companies. Mugabe exhorted them to not consign to oblivion his lessons on “the true meaning of independence: both political and economic.” He sounded disheartened at how the very Black population that he set out to empower continued to “take him for granted,” despite his unwillingness to succumb to the compulsions whipped up by apparent renegades, like Mandela in the neighbourhood, who astutely compromised with the white settlers amidst mounting international sanctions. The letter, touted to be the beginning of the end of the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, cautioned the Blacks that they would appreciate him more when he was gone (Ndaba 2017).