Zimbabwe: The coup that never was, and the election that could have been

On 14 november 2017, the Zimbabwean military launched ‘Operation Restore Legacy' in a bid to force President Robert Mugabe out of office and facilitate a transfer of power to his former Vice President, Emmerson Mnangagwa. The intervention was triggered by Mugabe’s move to sideline senior military figures—including army chief Constantino Chiwenga—and to sack one of their closest political allies, Mnangagwa, just over a week earlier. The president justified this ‘night of the long knives' on the basis that some of the most influential figures in the country had been plotting to undermine his authority. However, ultimately Mugabe’s gambit only served to weaken his hold on power.|In the three years that followed the 2014 ZANU-PF congress,1 the race to succeed Mugabe—who is now 95—had split the ruling party into two rival factions: ‘Lacoste’, led by Mnangagwa and with strong links to the military and key branches of the state; and the ‘G40’ (from Generation 40) group, a less coherent ragbag band of younger politicians that included several prominent Ministers and was associated with, but never effectively led by, the president’s second wife, Grace.2 For nearly four decades until late 2017, Mugabe had consistently performed a clever balancing act, playing one faction off against the other and fostering internal rivalries that kept all sides accountable only to the centre. However, when he removed Mnangagwa, the president effectively sided with G40, destabilizing the regime and thus setting in motion a course of action that would ultimately lead to his own downfall.