Robert Mugabe’s downfall has left deep fractures in the society of Zimbabwe

The final chapter in the story of Robert Mugabe did not follow the pattern of the downfall of other strongmen I have covered in recent years. The departures of Muammar Gaddafi, of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, which was the start of the Arab Spring, and Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine had taken place after an uprising, a period of violence of varying duration, then a sudden and, in the case of the Libyan leader, brutal ending.

The decline and fall of Zimbabwe’s president was a slow-burn, a prolonged affair. The outcome was inevitable, but it was one played out with those who deposed him going through a supposed adherence to the laws and customs and traditions, national and tribal, of the country.

Mugabe’s overthrow, his life under semi-captivity, and then his death at the age of 95 removed from the international stage one of its most well known leaders, a man who led his country to freedom from British colonial rule, and became a respected inspiration to a generation of revolutionary political activists in Africa.

But it was also a life that became a prominent example of the misconduct of nationalist leaders whose coming had been met with great hope and expectation, before that turned to disillusionment and anger at their abuses of power.

Zimbabwe was once a relatively prosperous country – albeit the wealth was disproportionately spread between the races. But after 37 years at its helm, Mugabe left it bankrupt and divided, facing an uncertain and bleak future.

One of the last memories of Mugabe for many of us was of him sitting on a green leather chair in a pagoda-shaped pavilion on the garden of his home in Harare, Blue Roof, with his wife Grace standing behind him. Both were impeccably dressed: he in a navy suit, white shirt, tie and pocket handkerchief; she in a white top with a grey jumper. There was a bank of microphones on a circular grey stone in front of them then a group of journalists. We had rushed there in answer to phone calls announcing that the “president of Zimbabwe” had decided to hold a press conference.

At the time Mugabe was under house arrest, having been overthrown 12 months earlier by a combination of a coup by the military and street protests which had caught him and Grace, the shadow ruler, and their coterie by surprise. It was also a matter of surprise for much of the international media which, like most of the international community, had lost interest in the benighted state.

We did not know what to expect as we set off for Zimbabwe. Some of us hurriedly bought garish T-shirts and hats while changing flights at Johannesburg in the hope of passing for tourists. Pretending to be something other than a journalist had long been necessary when trying to get in there and clandestine reporting brought very real risks, as we had found, of encounters with the thugs of Comrade Bob’s ruling Zanu-PF party private army, and the menacing sunglass-wearing official thugs of the secret police, the CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation).

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The call to the journalists from the Mugabes for a briefing had come in the last days of the election campaign last July. It was not entirely a hollow, grandiose gesture, the former leader still commanded enough loyalty among the electorate to make his endorsement of value to the competing factions.

Watching Robert Mugabe that day was a fascinating but also rather poignant. He was, at the beginning, lucid and matter-of-fact, but then gradually became emotional and tearful, raging, King Lear-like, at his enemies.

“I can’t vote for those who tormented me, no I can’t! I can’t!” said Mugabe, raising his fist as he decried his former political comrades, before praising the main opposition candidate, Nelson Chamisa, of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), a young man who said he was modelling his run on Donald Trump.

Grace Mugabe, his former secretary, 41 years younger than him, smiled encouragement and made sotto voce comments. Claims of corruption and venality against the woman, with nicknames of “DisGrace” and “Gucci Grace” had added to Mugabe’s unpopularity, and her ambition to take over was one of the reasons given by the army to justify the putsch.

“I do not accept the denunciation and vilification of my wife that is going on every day. Leave, leave, leave my wife alone. I want Grace to remain my Grace,” cried Mugabe before slumping forward, suddenly exhausted. His wife patted him on the shoulder and whispered into his ear before looking up at us. “Look what they have done to this great man,” she whispered.

Behind the words of defiance and anger, however, there was tacit acknowledgement from the couple that there would be no way back into power for them.

Mugabe’s removal from office had led to people pouring out on the streets of the capital, Harare. There were calls for a “day of rage”. My colleagues and I wondered as we saw the huge crowds whether we would see Comrade Mugabe and his wife end up like Col Gaddafi and his son, Mutassim, hunted down and killed.

It became, instead, a day of celebrations where everyone, including us in the foreign media, was made to feel welcome. The police, blamed for heavy-handedness, kept away. There was little or no trouble, it was felt, with the infectious exuberance that a new beginning had come away from the darkness.

Women and men, the young and elderly, danced, sang and waved the national flag. They carried placards saying “Mugabe just go”, “Mugabe leave Zimbabwe now”, “People v Robert Mugabe”, “Red Card for Mugabe” and, in a place where they avidly follow English Premier League football, “Mugabe worse than Moyes” and “Wenger must go”. A huge banner, strung up on the road to the parliament declared “To a better tomorrow”.

But the mood of optimism had not lasted long, with the deep fractures of a society in strife soon in evidence.

The election campaign was bitter and acrimonious with the opposition MDC claiming fraud. In the days which followed, we saw troops descend from armoured carriers to open fire with live rounds on the streets and then follow-up with bayonets and sjamboks, the heavy rhino-hide whips favoured by security forces of apartheid South Africa

The following day I met people injured, shot, stabbed and beaten. Vimbai Maburutse, a 28-year-old MDC activist receiving treatment for flesh gouged by sjambok, was among those who felt the Mugabe times had returned almost as soon as they were supposed to finish.

Soldiers were shooting at cars she and other protestors were hiding behind. “They were trying to hit us through the windows. Our own army was being used to try and kill us, it’s very sad, nothing has changed from the old days,” she said, shaking her head.

Maburutse started running and was then whipped until she fell to the ground. “How is this any different from Mugabe times, we are asking ourselves, and we don’t think it is; we really do not know what the future holds for us,” she wanted to stress.

The recriminations had continued. The beginning of this year saw fuel prices double, and steep rises in the cost of other essential goods. There were demonstrations and a crackdown in which more than a dozen people were killed and 80 were treated for gunshot wounds, with more than 700 arrests, including 11 opposition MPs. Doctors reported evidence of “systematic torture” of prisoners.

A severe drought, the worst in a century, and cyclones have brought further problems for an agricultural sector which had been pillaged and then left to rot by the ruling coterie who had taken over previously well-run farms.

Among the examples I had seen of this was in Mazowe in Mashonaland where Grace Mugabe had usurped fertile land, evicted farmers and taken over a dairy. The first lady grew rich from “Graceland”, as it became known, while people were forced to live under trees.

In June this year the UN estimated that more than 5 million people – a third of the country’s population – would need humanitarian assistance by the end of the year. The World Food Programme (WFP) stated in its August report that 2 million people were facing starvation.

Last month Hilal Elver, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, warned “people of Zimbabwe are slowly getting to a point of suffering a manmade starvation. More than 60 per cent of the population of a country once seen as the breadbasket of Africa is now considered food insecure, with most households unable to obtain enough food to meet basic needs due to hyperinflation.”

A week later it was revealed in a legal document that Mugabe had left $10m cash in a bank. There were also four houses, a farm and a fleet of 10 cars. All this just a fraction, it is estimated, of the fortune he and Grace had accrued at home and abroad.

It was also claimed, by a family lawyer, that the former leader did not leave a will. This is likely to lead to internecine court battles between his surviving relations. For the people of Zimbabwe, however, the legacy of Comrade Bob is a traumatised land, left scarred by repression and corruption; a place where hope died.

Robert Mugabe announced his resignation as president of Zimbabwe, as parliament began impeachment proceedings to strip him of power and open the way for prosecution.

His departure, after a stand-off lasting days following a military coup, brings an end to the reign of a man who was Africa’s longest-serving head of state, and one of the best known and most controversial figures in international politics.

The announcement of the resignation came with the drama that has been one of the hallmarks of this extraordinary saga. The motion of impeachment was being debated by the House of Assembly and the Senate, with speaker after speaker lining up to denounce the president, when the news came that he had gone.

There was a moment of silence when speaker Jacob Mudenda adjourned the debate and gave the reason why. Then there was pandemonium, with MPs and senators clapping, shouting, cheering and hugging each other.

The noise inside the Harare International Conference Centre, where proceedings had been moved to accommodate the two houses of parliament, was soon matched and surpassed by roars from outside, followed by the noise of car horns and music.

There was relief among many in Zanu-PF that the matter was not to drag on longer than it already had. Critics say that skeletons from the party’s decades in power may have come tumbling out if the impeachment process had run its full, long course. Mr Mugabe would also have faced more humiliation.

Lovemore Matuke, the chief whip, said: “I am very happy that the president has chosen to go voluntarily. This would have ended in serious embarrassment.”

Former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had been sacked recently by Mr Mugabe – at the instigation, it is claimed, of Grace Mugabe – will be appointed president in the next 48 hours, the ruling party announced.

Zanu-PF had removed Mr Mugabe as its leader, replacing him with Mr Mnangagwa, last week. According to the constitution, it should be the current vice president Phelekezla Mphoko who takes over, but she is a supporter of Grace Mugabe and thus out of the running.

In his resignation letter, Mr Mugabe stated: “My decision to resign is voluntary on my part and arises from my concern for the welfare of the people of Zimbabwe and my desire for a smooth, non-violent transfer of power.”

But his fate and that of his wife, who is accused of abuse and corruption, and nicknamed “Gucci Grace” and “DisGrace” for her lavish spending as the country turned into an economic basket case, remains unclear.

The president is believed to have secured immunity from prosecution for himself and his family in negotiations with the military high command, in return for standing down.

But he used a speech on Sunday evening, in which he was due to announce his resignation, to insist that he would stay in power. Officials now say they do not know if the offer of immunity still stands.

The inglorious end to 93-year-old Mr Mugabe’s attempts to cling onto power came three-and-half hours after the initial impeachment proceedings had begun, in an atmosphere of excitement and tension in the packed and overflowing chamber of the parliament in Harare.

Just before the proceedings got underway, a man in the public gallery shouted: “Don’t let us down!” Outside, protesters denounced the president and demanded that he go immediately: posters with faces of Mr Mugabe and his wife Grace were laid on the road to be walked and driven over.

The crowd outside could be heard as the speaker reminded the MPs that what they were about to undertake was “unprecedented and historic” in the nation, since independence. As the parliamentarians moved to the larger conference centre, there were further reminders from those gathered outside that it was their duty to protect the country from Mr Mugabe who, there were rising fears, may be trying to organise a counter-coup.

But any last attempts to arrive at a settlement which may have allowed Mr Mugabe a bit more time had failed. The military, who had carried out a coup last week, announced on Monday evening that talks would be held between Mr Mugabe and Mr Mnangagwa when the latter returned from exile in South Africa.

For his part, the former vice president on Tuesday accused Mr Mugabe of being behind a plot to murder him, and said he would only return when it was safe to do so. The fate of the president, he implied, was already sealed, and he had a warning for anyone who would take Mr Mugabe’s place

“I am aware that parliament intends to impeach the president,” he said. “Parliament is the ultimate expression of the will of the people outside an election, and in my view it is expressing national sentiment by implementing that impeachment. Never should the nation be held at ransom by one person ever again, whose desire is to die in office at whatever cost to the nation.”

Mr Mugabe’s departure was greeted with satisfaction by much of the international community. The US embassy in Harare said it was a “historic moment” and congratulated Zimbabweans who “raised their voices and stated peacefully and clearly that the time for change was overdue”.

In London, Theresa May said the resignation “provides Zimbabwe with an opportunity to forge a new path free of the oppression that characterised his rule”. Britain, “as Zimbabwe’s oldest friend”, will do all it can to support free and fair elections and the rebuilding of the Zimbabwean economy, she added.

South Africa’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, welcomed the move, saying Mr Mugabe had turned from “liberator to dictator”.

But Jacob Zuma’s government, along with a number of other ones in the African Union and South African Development Community (SADC), has spoken out against the removal of the president by a military takeover. Mr Zuma, and the Angolan President Joao Lourenco, had been due to fly to Zimbabwe on Wednesday to mediate between Mr Mugabe and the military.

There have also been questions in Zimbabwe about whether Mr Mnangagwa, nicknamed “the Crocodile”, was the right person to lead Zimbabwe to a future of reform and out of the grip of corruption.

The 75-year-old former intelligence chief was very much part of the Zanu-PF old guard, and had been associated with allegations of graft and vote rigging in the past. He was reportedly targeted by US sanctions in the early 2000s for undermining democratic development in his country.

Samuel Demba, a 23-year-old student who had rushed from university to the city centre on hearing about the resignation, was concerned that “the old ways may continue”.

“We have had 40 years of Mugabe before we managed to get rid of him. Do we really want someone who had been with him all that time to be president?” he asked.

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At this point two friends, who had come running, draped a Zimbabwean flag around his head. “The time to worry about all that will come later, Sammy,” said Amanda Katsande. “We need to enjoy ourselves tonight. This will be a time everyone will remember. Zimbabwe does not make news for that many good things. But what happened today is really good; we have shown we can bring change to our country.”

There was also debate, amid the celebrations, about whether Mr Mugabe and his cohort should be tried.

“Yes, absolutely, that should happen,” was the view of Matthew Basopo. “Mugabe helped Grace to steal from Zimbabwe, there were others who then benefited from her crimes.

“But still, Mugabe and Grace could have got away if he had stuck by the deal and resigned on Sunday. Now they must face the music together.”