{"id":27165,"date":"2016-07-24T05:35:32","date_gmt":"2016-07-24T05:35:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/war-veterans-attack-beginning-of-the-end-for\/"},"modified":"2016-07-24T05:35:01","modified_gmt":"2016-07-24T05:35:01","slug":"war-veterans-attack-beginning-of-the-end-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/war-veterans-attack-beginning-of-the-end-for\/","title":{"rendered":"War veterans attack ‘beginning of the end’ for Mugabe: analysts"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Mugabe’s party is split between his wife Grace and vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa as Mugabe’s possible successors.}<\/p>\n

Zimbabwe’s war veterans’ surprise attack on President Robert Mugabe signals the “beginning of the end” for the long-time leader, already buckling under pressure from a restive population angry over worsening economic woes.<\/p>\n

In a rare public rebuke to the world’s oldest president, war veterans decried Mugabe’s “dictatorial tendencies” and vowed to withdraw their support if he seeks re-election in 2018.<\/p>\n

“This is the beginning of the end for Mugabe,” said Takavafira Zhou, a political scientist from Masvingo State University.<\/p>\n

“The war veterans have realised Mr Mugabe is sinking and with him his regime. They don’t want to sink with the ship,” said Zhou.<\/p>\n

For decades, the war veterans who fought in the 1972-1979 war of independence have propped up Mr Mugabe as the “heart and soul” and “foot soldiers” of the ruling Zanu-PF party, said analyst Charles Laurie of London-based risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft.<\/p>\n

But during a meeting last week, the war veterans said their relationship with Mr Mugabe, 92, was seriously damaged.<\/p>\n

“The relationship between us as war veterans and the president has broken down. He and the party do not like us anymore,” the war veterans’ political commissar Francis Nhando said.<\/p>\n

The ruling party this week launched a project to reward party loyalists with housing plots, but excluded war veterans who over the years were given first priority in party and government projects.<\/p>\n

“We are very angry with what the president is doing,” Beta Guvheya, a war veteran, told AFP.<\/p>\n

“There is no money in this country not because the country is poor… but we don’t have a manager,” said Guvheya.<\/p>\n

“That is the reason we are saying Mugabe must go. Mugabe is not going to win an election. No one is interested in Mugabe’s government now.”<\/p>\n

Former war veterans leader Jabulani Sibanda said: “We have reached rock bottom. People are angry.”<\/p>\n

Mr Sibanda who was expelled from Zanu-PF party for warning over the excessive influence of Mr Mugabe’s wife Grace, said the country’s leadership “has lost touch with reality”.<\/p>\n

{{‘PEOPLE ARE ANGRY’}}<\/p>\n

“By withdrawing support for Mr Mugabe, the war veterans have dealt a serious blow to the embattled dictator,” said Laurie, adding that their “proclamation seems to mark a decisive break with Zanu-PF”.<\/p>\n

Editor of the privately-owned Zimbabwe Independent Dumisani Muleya said the country was in unchartered territory.<\/p>\n

“The war veterans’ historic stand against Mugabe could be Zimbabwe’s political decisive moment. It might be a turning point of epoch-making proportions,” Muleya said.<\/p>\n

Muleya warned that if the war veterans joined forces with the national resistance movement driven by civic groups, churches and opposition parties, Mugabe “could soon face his Waterloo”.<\/p>\n

The country has in recent weeks been hit by protests including a mass strike called by an evangelical pastor Evan Mawarire, which shut business earlier this month.
\n“I am glad everyone is standing up” (against Mugabe), said Mr Sibanda.<\/p>\n

Authorities in Zimbabwe on Saturday denounced the war veterans’ statement as “treasonable” and “traitorous” and said they were investigating its origin and threatened to prosecute the authors.<\/p>\n

Starting in 2000, the war veterans led seizures of white-owned commercial farms in what Mugabe said was a reversal of imbalances from the colonial era.<\/p>\n

Their statement came in the wake of a surge of public anger against Mugabe, triggered by an economic crisis that has left banks short of cash and the government struggling to pay its workers.<\/p>\n

Mugabe’s party is split between his wife Grace and vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa as Mugabe’s possible successors.<\/p>\n

\"Zimbabwe<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Mugabe’s party is split between his wife Grace and vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa as Mugabe’s possible successors.} Zimbabwe’s war veterans’ surprise attack on President Robert Mugabe signals the “beginning of the end” for the long-time leader, already buckling under pressure from a restive population angry over worsening economic woes. In a rare public rebuke to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2461],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-27165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-daily-nation"],"bylines":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27165"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=27165"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=27165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}