Mugabe mark II

Ten days ago, Zimbabwe’s President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, hiked the price of petrol by 250 per cent, making it the most expensive in the world. There had been an acute fuel shortage for months and this move was supposed to ease the situation — presumably by making petrol beyond the reach of most in this impoverished country.

Mnangagwa then jetted off to Russia and Kazakhstan, a warm-up tour for his gig at Davos. He left his deputy, Constantino Chiwenga (until recently head of the army), to cope with the fallout. And fallout there was. Trade unions led stay-aways in protest. This developed into the blocking of roads, looting of shops and some arson, mostly by unemployed youths — which most youths there are.

Then, under cover of a government-imposed internet blackout, the security forces were unleashed by the vice-president. Roving bands of soldiers (some of them masked, never a good sartorial sign in a soldier) went house-to-house, smashing windows, beating residents at random, stomping on their cellphones. The soldiers killed at least 12 people and wounded another 80 or so. More than 242 people were treated for bite wounds from patrol dogs. Police arrested more than 1,000, including some ten opposition MPs. Soldiers conducted acts of ritual humiliation — forcing young men to bathe in the pools of standing sewage that dot the decrepit working-class townships. And all this by the same soldiers that so many Zimbabweans lined the streets to welcome as heroes when they toppled Robert Mugabe just over a year ago. The line from that moment to this one is straight and simple and predictable.

(Photo: Getty)

The internal fighting in Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party that ultimately unseated him after 37 years in power wasn’t primarily ideological or ethnic, it was a family feud on steroids, it pitted old against young.