Of course, when it comes, it will take a sublime nuance. We will not see a potbellied man in military fatigues and dripping epaulettes appear on TV to announce that he has taken over.
The securocrats we are currently suffering under know very well that would be strategically untenable. They still remember what the international community, including erstwhile loyals in the region, can do to a rogue state.
Wind back to 2008, after the controversial presidential run-off in which the military viciously participated in handing President Robert Mugabe another term at the expense of democracy.
The outcome of the June runoff disgusted the world so much that Zanu (PF), for the first time, bore the brunt of real international isolation. The country was on the verge of collapse. You do not have to listen beyond Patrick Chinamasa’s recent revelation that government, in late 2008 and early 2009, was operating without a single cent in its coffers.
So, the securocrats will not risk that. Instead, a man in a suit, perhaps Mugabe himself for some time, will sell the façade of a civilian government while the generals calls the shots from the backroom.
As I have alluded to previously, Zanu (PF) is working towards a GNU 2 that will give them even more leverage against the MDC and further solidify their power base. This is the stage on which a military coup will be played out.
The scenario into which Zimbabwe is gradually degenerating, where politicians with guns will come to the boardrooms, almost took root in 2009, thanks to Chinamasa’s telling acknowledgement to the Sunday Mail this week.
Chinamasa informs us that when he took over the finance ministry in an acting capacity in January 2009, he mobilised the defence and security ministers as well as all the service chiefs into a think tank to determine Zimbabwe’s finances and economy!
That is how bad it had become. A band of people who normally think, act and talk with their hands to take charge of a whole country’s economic affairs. Chinamasa confirmed that this degeneration into a virtual coup was frustrated by the establishment of the coalition government in early 2009.
From the time the GNU was formed, the securocrats seem to have strategically retreated, but they are now pushing towards the frontline once again – increasingly involving themselves in the untidy affairs of Zanu (PF).
They played a central role, recently, in the disbandment of the party’s District Coordinating Committees. They continue to make political statements that betray their position as the actual vanguard of Zanu (PF) and are, in fact, mobilizing themselves into a faction in the party.
Zanu (PF), needless to say, is their avenue towards national power; it is their entrance point into government. Over the years, military figures have permeated almost every government department.
I foresee an increasing number of these security men announcing their “retirement” from government service to enter into politics.
Global Witness’s recent report unearthing the involvement of business tycoons in oiling the operations of the security department makes informative reading and points to the advance of the securocrats into national politics.
It would be dishonest for anyone to deny the fact that the so-called Government of National Unity, while it helped stem the crisis that Zimbabwe witnessed for a decade to some extent, is in fact a parallel and disconnected arrangement.
As Global Witness rightly points out, the security sector realised it would not easily get money from Tendai Biti, hence the strategy to wrest the diamond mines from national hands and place them firmly in Zanu (PF)’s hands.
Financing the sector from the diamonds is meant to empower the securocrats and prepare them for their eventual take over – concealed in civilian apparel. I do not see them becoming born-again liberals overnight and folding their hands to let the process of democratisation take its course. A lot is at stake for them and their only option is a soft coup.
Post published in: Analysis