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Mnangagwa is widely mistrusted due to his responsibility for (and refusal to acknowledge) 1982-85 “Gukhurahundi” massacres of more than 20,000 people in the country’s western provinces (mostly members of the minority Ndebele ethnic group, whose handful of armed dissidents he termed “cockroaches” needing a dose of military “DDT”); his subversion of the 2008 presidential election which Mugabe initially lost; his subsequent heading of the Joint Operations Committee secretly running the country, sabotaging democratic initiatives; as well as for his close proximity – as then Defence Minister – to widespread diamond looting from 2008-16. Mugabe himself last year complained of revenue shortfalls from diamond mining in eastern Zimbabwe’s Marange fields: “I don’t think we’ve exceeded US$2 billion or so, and yet we think that well over US$15 billion or more has been earned in that area.”

Mnangagwa had fought Rhodesian colonialism in the 1970s, and soon became one of Mugabe’s leading henchmen, rising to the vice presidency in 2014. But Mugabe fired him on November 6, signaling Grace’s ruthless ascent in spite of Chiwenga’s repeated warnings since early 2016. Three years ago, with Grace egging him on, Mugabe sacked another close revolutionary-era ally, vice president Joice Mujuru (62). (Mujuru subsequently launched a new party which subsequently showed no capacity to influence events, but she was expected to eventually forge an alliance with democratic opposition forces to contest the scheduled 2018 election.)

What with both economic and political degeneration accelerating, Mnangagwa’s firing was the catalyst for an emergency Beijing trip by his ally, army leader Constantino Chiwenga (61), for consultations with the Chinese army command. Mnangagwa received military training in China during Mao’s days, and China today has substantial assets in Zimbabwe, including repeated weapon sales and stakes in tobacco, infrastructure and mining, as well as its retail imports that continue to deindustrialize Zimbabwean manufacturing.

Beijing’s Global Times, which often parrots official wisdom, was increasingly wary of Mugabe. According to a contributor, Wang Hongwi of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, “Mnangagwa, a reformist, will abolish Mugabe's faulty investment policy. In a country with a bankrupt economy, whoever takes office needs to launch economic reforms and open up to foreign investment… Chinese investment in Zimbabwe has also fallen victim to Mugabe's policy and some projects were forced to close down or move to other countries in recent years, bringing huge losses.” (Hongwi did not mention whether Sam Pa represents the ethos of such Chinese investors.)

A sense of such new benefactors’ potential generosity must have played a role in the coup plotters’ calculations. For Mnangagwa is not only being toasted in Beijing, but also by Tory geopolitical opportunists in London. Although many Britons object, their ambassador to Zimbabwe Catriona Laing has for three years attempted to “rebuild bridges and ensure that re-engagement succeeds to facilitate Mnangagwa’s rise to power” with a reported “$2 billion economic bail-out.”

As the coup plan – initially scheduled for December prior to Zanu-PF’s next congress – was pushed forward, on November 13 he cautioned against “reckless utterances by politicians from the ruling party denigrating the military” – whom he termed “counter-revolutionary infiltrators” – and he insisted that Mugabe’s “targeting members of the party with a liberation background must stop.” Snubbing this warning the next day, the G40 maintained control of Zanu-PF’s machinery and issued a provocative statement highly critical of Mnangagwa and Chiwenga.

Mugabe’s erratic spin-doctor for most of the last two decades was Jonathan Moyo, a former US-trained academic. Moyo was responsible for some of Zanu-PF’s most extreme rhetorical attacks on political opponents, including media crackdowns a decade ago. But his prolific twitter feed suddenly went quiet on November 14 once ZDF tanks rolled into the city. The army rapidly occupied Mugabe’s main office and the national broadcaster, announcing to the country that the ZDF was in command and would ‘protect’ Mugabe while searching out the ‘criminals’ surrounding him. Moyo had repeatedly angered Chiwenga, even alleging several times that his 2015 doctoral thesis in ethics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal was authored by someone else.

Moyo and another G40 leader once considered potential presidential material, Saviour Kasukuwere, were apparently picked up early on November 15 and taken to the army barracks. According to an insider interviewed by journalist Sipho Masondo, “People are romanticising the coup and saying it was not bloody. It was damn bloody. People are being beaten badly.”

That nightmare – Mnangagwa’s new-found ability to relegitimise Zanu-PF with army support – is now unfolding, with only an economic meltdown to compel him to negotiate.

If donor aid to the new regime is not forthcoming, a desperation mentality will rapidly emerge, for economic barriers to bureaucratic looting are periodically reached in Zimbabwe. For example, when the world’s worst hyperinflation (500 billion percent) wiped out the former currency in 2008, new arrangements were required: in that case, the turn to the US dollar and rand. The only other option is recovering looted wealth by Mugabe and his cronies – but such an asset search might prove highly embarrassing to Mnangagwa and Chiwenga, too.

t appears that in this context, only the Zimbabwe government’s full-fledged relegitimation can attract sufficient foreign aid to avoid an economic meltdown. For this purpose, an ideal-type ‘national unity’ scenario – which appears unlikely, but nevertheless worth contemplating – would have Chiwenga quickly return his troops to the barracks and Interim President Mnangagwa appoint two Zanu-PF vice presidents: Mujuru and, for ethnic balance, Dumisa Dabengwa (77) from the Zimbabwe African People’s Union party. The latter party is a revival of one Mugabe had crushed and coopted in 1987, when he unsuccessfully attempted to establish one-party rule. Another Mnangagwa ally anticipated to rise to the top tier is Sydney Sekeramayi (73).

But most importantly, the unity regime would need to include at least three recently-reunited Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leaders: Tsvangirai as prime minister (his 2009-13 role), Biti in the finance ministry to raise support from Western donors, and Welshman Ncube (56) who enjoys widespread support among the Ndebele people.

Not only are donors required, international tolerance will be needed on the country’s foreign debt and profit-repatriation arrears.

Zuma is also criticised for not halting periodic upsurges of anti-Zimbabwean xenophobic violence in South Africa, which in 2015 led to angry protests at South Africa’s High Commission in Harare.

Even before a new aid package is negotiated, two of the most crucial economic decisions a national unity government will face are whether to continue introducing $300 million worth of fast-devaluing Reserve Bank currency into the banking system this month, and whether to pay a massive fine to the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Donald Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin (formerly of Goldman Sachs), is demanding immediate payment of $385 million – down from an initial $3.8 billion – by the country’s largest bank, Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe, following more than 15,000 separate cases of sanctions busting that date from the Bush and Obama regimes’ punishment of Mugabe for human rights violations.

n a third financial controversy, Biti suspects that his 2013-17 successor, Patrick Chinamasa (who was reshuffled from finance last month, into a new cybersecurity portfolio), fraudulently issued Treasury Bills and backed up the new currency with illegitimate African Export-Import Bank loans. Biti is calling for a full debt audit.

democratic activists are concerned that what once had been a formidable set of progressive civil society organisations – trade unions, urban community groups, women and youth – back in 1999 when their “Working People’s Convention” launched the MDC, can no longer influence this transition. The last attempt in 2016, a “This Flag” meme launched by local pastor Evan Mawarire, soon ran out of steam.

it becomes s even more vital for progressives committed to democracy and social justice to redouble grassroots organising and generate crystal-clear demands, especially in the urban areas. (The rural peasantry suffers far tighter systems of socio-political control by Zanu-PF, so have never been reliable allies.) If not, says International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe leader Munyaradzi Gwisai, “There’s a potential that the Mnangagwa, MDC elites and the military could be part of a national unity government. Ultimately they are also scared of the working class, because austerity could lead to revolts.”

As Harare activist Tom Gumede wrote me privately on November 17 just before the masses hit the streets, “This is the time for workers, students and the poor of Zimbabwe to build a formidable unity for the future beyond Mugabe. A fractured population will lose the battles of the future… Another Zimbabwe is Possible. Through mass action the resistant Mugabe will finally be dislodged. His current cover under the Constitution will be blown up when people have spoken beyond the military takeover… Viva People Power and No to Elitist Transitions.” *** POSTSCRIPT: After I wrote this article, investigations of the new rulers’ wealth were published by a Citizen reporter. The Johannesburg newspaper’s Gosebo Mathope is drawing public attention to a crucial question: will the new rulers – especially Mnangagwa and Chiwenga – repatriate their ill-begotten wealth so as to relieve the country’s extreme financial pressure, including pressure emanating from the belly of the imperialist beast, Donald Trump’s Treasury Department? Or instead, will they continue their traditions of looting Zimbabwe as an unpatriotic bourgeoisie, and then follow persistent IMF advice to impose austerity and cut the civil service – as did the prior incumbent during the 1990s, to his ultimate regret?

when the deep antagonisms of this society escalated, civic organizations and ordinary citizens were faced with a confounding dilemma: either to tolerate the suspension of the rule of law and go for a historic breakthrough; or defend the rule of law and defend perpetual inequalities and backwardness. In our case, we defended the land reform not because we are “undemocratic,” but because we believe in a deeper form of democracy, one that can only be set on a more meaningful and stable footing by structural changes. Despite the casualties identified by Mamdani, the land reform has indeed created the social and economic foundation for a more meaningful democratization.

There is need now to address the deficiencies of the land reform process, to rebuild the hard-won democratic institutions, and to lay the seeds for the next phase of the national democratic revolution.

land reform was not “hijacked” by “cronies”; although cronyism has indeed operated, it has been marginal to the whole process. The land reform has been broad-based and largely egalitarian. It has benefited directly 140,000 families, mainly among the rural poor, but also among their urban counterparts, who on average have acquired 20 hectares of land, constituting 70% of the land acquired.

Moreover, various new dynamics are underway in the countryside in terms of labor mobilization, investment in infrastructure, new small industries, new commodity chains, and the formation of cooperatives. And despite the adverse economic conditions, land utilization levels have already surpassed the 40% mark that prevailed on white farms after a whole century of state subsidies and racial privilege. That the crop yields remain low is largely due to input shortages, not the lack of entrepreneurial spirit or expertise by the new farmers, as is so often claimed. The new agrarian structure in Zimbabwe now holds out the promise of obtaining food sovereignty (which it had never obtained before), creating new domestic inter-sectoral linkages, and formulating a new model of agro-industrial development with organized peasants in the forefront.

Needless to say, a number of scholars have never recognized this potential. On the contrary, they continue to speculate about “crony capitalism” (Patrick Bond) and the “destruction of the agriculture sector” (Horace Campbell), without having conducted any concrete research of their own, or properly interrogated the new research that has emerged.

The most serious contradiction of the whole process has been the shrinking of political space, especially for progressive social forces. The state apparatus has continued to resort to brute force, long after the land reform.

It became very clear to us, as the rural and urban land movements dissipated or succumbed, that neither political party was capable of advancing the national democratic revolution to the next phase: if the opposition was a lost cause from the beginning, the ruling party had suffered a terminal class shift. We suggested that the only way forward was for social movements themselves to take the initiative, but not by contesting the control of the state apparatus.

We called for a retreat from dogmatic party politics and a return to grassroots political work, with the objective of building durable and democratic structures in the countryside, especially cooperatives, building alliances with urban workers, and beginning once again to change the correlation of forces (Moyo and Yeros 2007a).

Horace Campbell and Patrick Bond, especially, have gone to great lengths to say that there are no sanctions on Zimbabwe and that the economic decline is wholly self-inflicted. Indeed, they have given the impression that imperialism has suddenly been suspended in the case of Zimbabwe. Scarnecchia, et.al. have gone even further to call Mamdani “dishonest” for attributing blame to sanctions. This absurd chorus became complete when supposed ideological adversaries claimed that the West is actually saving Zimbabwe: “USAID was prolific in sending out its food support,” says Bond; “Western food aid has been a lifeline,” say Scarnecchia, et al.

the USA tried to re-establish its military presence in the region, initially in Zimbabwe, and partially succeeded by building an air strip in Botswana. It should have been expected, therefore, that relations would heat up in the late 1990s, when Zimbabwe abandoned structural adjustment in 1996, initiated extensive compulsory land acquisition in 1997, mobilized Angola and Namibia in 1998 to intervene against the US-sponsored invasion of the DRC by Rwanda and Uganda, and finally turned on its neo-colonial constitution in 2000. This was a major shift in the correlation of forces. Did the West really turn the other cheek at this point, as Campbell and Bond seem to suggest?

However, we must be clear that none of this is a problem of “patrimonialism”, as our detractors claim — a problem which could be eradicated by “regime change.” The insufficiency and incoherence of economic policy is a reflection of the changing balance of class forces in the country and the weakness of urban and rural working-class organizations themselves. Regime change will not change this fact.

peasant production should be made the pillar of the economic recovery, through subsidized inputs, fair prices, and secure tenure (which does not mean freehold).

food sovereignty

resolution of the farmworker question, an underclass of “cheap labor,”

trade and industrial policy should be reformulated to secure the recovery of strategic industries and their re-orientation to wage goods and to the technical upgrading of agriculture.

mining sector must also be guarded closely

Of course, many have argued that the removal of Robert Mugabe and his replacement by Morgan Tsvangirai is the precondition for the re-opening of political space and “effective” economic policy. But Mugabe’s removal would by no means guarantee the re-opening of political space, given that the opposition has been consistently clear about its support for an extroverted recovery program, which in turn could only be implemented on the back of a new round of political repression.

“The MDC and most in civil society have formally opposed Western-style sanctions,” declares Bond. But they never put up a fight, and this is because their main electoral strategy has always been to drive the economy into the ground, not to organize the working class on a working-class platform. “Zimbabweans who want transformation must oppose the neo-liberal forces within the MDC,” Campbell tells us. But who are these opposing forces within the MDC? And why should we expect them to bite the hand that feeds them? And if they did so, why should we expect them to be spared of a new round of destabilization? For us, the task remains for social forces, including the trade unions and farmers’ organizations, to step back from their political party alliances and resist a return to an elite pact and IMF tutelage.

(There follow some contentious points on land reform, which I'll leave to others to rebut. I'm most concerned that Mamdani amplifies what can be considered Mugabe's greatest myth: economic destruction and inflation unprecedented in recorded human history is due to ``sanctions''.)

Perhaps this is the most bizarre sentence. Land reform will again be needed in Zimbabwe, to dislodge Mugabe's cronies who have merely taken over existing plantations. But land aside, the September 15, 2008, [``powersharing''] agreement is a disaster in many other respects, as it combines the worst of both worlds: looming neoliberalism if the business faction of the MDC influences economic policy (the MDC gets the finance ministry), and ongoing crony capitalism through Mugabe's extensive patronage system within the Zimbabwe state; plus a relegitimised repressive arm of the state for those in civil society who would protest the new elite transition.Fortunately, it's so very bad that civil society have persuaded progressives within the MDC not to accept the deal. The main problem is that with all the elite negotiating going on, there's really no Plan B for popular insurrection.And Mahmood Mamdani's otherwise politically inspiring work does not help the Zimbabwean people there, at all.

Zimbabwe has seen the greatest transfer of property in southern Africa since colonisation and it has all happened extremely rapidly. Eighty per cent of the 4000 white farmers were expropriated; most of them stayed in Zimbabwe. Redistribution revolutionised property-holding, adding more than a hundred thousand small owners to the base of the property pyramid. In social and economic – if not political – terms, this was a democratic revolution. But there was a heavy price to pay.The first casualty was the rule of law, already tenuous by 1986.

A deeper capitalist malaise engulfed Zimbabwe since around 1974, the year that per capita wealth began to decline, based on overaccumulation of capital and, by the time of structural adjustment in the early 1990s, a turn to the speculative/parasitical mode of not only capital accumulation but also state management. These are not Mugabe's ``policies'', but problems all state managers have faced, nearly everywhere in the world.

Mugabe had much more leverage -- because politically he is a dictator -- to adopt a unique zig-zag technique between market liberalisation, crony-capitalist corruption and state interventions, leaving Zimbabwe with the highest inflation ever recorded in human history, at a time when neighbouring states' inflation was declining substantially due to more pure versions of neoliberalism. In comparison to such processes, ``sanctions'' have played a very small part in the present manifestation of this long crisis.

Land transfers to the majority were necessary and long overdue, since the free market model agreed at Lancaster House [the independence agreement between the liberation movement and the British government] and in subsequent World Bank loans wasn't working (nor was it meant to), and since structural adjustment had generated vast profits for tobacco, horticultural and other (mainly white) agro-exporters, while peasants lost economic ground during the 1990s (a point important for understanding what fueled so much resentment against wealthy white farmers)

Mugabe allowed far too many of his cronies to get good farms (as even a state investigating commission conceded), and didn't set up proper agricultural support systems for those millions of landless who should have benefited from redistribution, leading to a huge decline in agricultural output, food aid dependency on Western donors and NGO distributors, and the prospect now of mass starvation (points that Mamdani skirts).

2000-03 was the moment when -- reminiscent of the early/mid-1980s in Matabeleland -- Mugabe used brutal violence against his opponents, terrorising the society and vindicating those who claimed Mugabe's rule would necessarily end in dictatorship, hence leaving the early 2000s the definitively ``exhausted'' state of Mugabe's ultra-nationalism

``Settler colonialism'' easily transformed into post-settler neocolonialism nearly everywhere, and Zimbabwe is no exception, for while the society may now have only a quarter (or even less) of its former peak of white inhabitants, the economy is still oriented to activities that, if not controlled by white Zimbabweans or white South Africans or white Brits, mimics that control through compliant local black ownership -- in finance, commerce, mining and residual manufacturing especially (while a preponderance of white senior managers remains).

If this barb is aimed at white farmers, US/British diplomats and the world's conservative media, it is technically true. If it is aimed at those in civil society who consistently supported poor people both through radical land reform (minus the problems caused by Mugabe's rural ploys starting in 2000) and through ``rights to the city'' projects such as informalisation of survival activity, then it's misplaced.

In 1998 Mugabe was supporting Laurent Kabila (who came to power in part through mining interests), and his own allies' and generals' personal interests in that process are well documented. No doubt some geopolitical factors related to control over the eastern DRC were also in play, with the US lining up with Uganda and Rwanda for medium-term control of the region's resources. But Mamdani forgets that the IMF explicitly allowed huge financial transfers from within the Zimbabwe fiscus to the war (so long as cuts in other programs paid for it), and expressed much more concern about a new set of economic policies (the following from my co-authored book Zimbabwe's Plunge):

Britain announced a review of arms sales to Zimbabwe and, after the conference, again disclaimed any responsibility for funding land reform. Again, nothing new. The US also ended its military flirtation with the Zimbabwe army in the late 1990s.

The following year the IMF suspended lending to Zimbabwe, By then, Mugabe had stopped paying IMF loans back, and was violating several of the neoliberal conditions placed on earlier loans.

the uptick in state repression, Mugabe's zigzagging away from neoliberal economic policies, and a sense that Mugabe would soon lose to Tsvangirai in an election. But a great deal more donor aid continued to flow during the 2000s; the door was not shut, by any means. US AID in particular was prolific in sending out its food support, replete with branding logos all over the maize bags and cooking oil tins.

Surprisingly, Mamdani does not mention the most profound reason for the IMF's above decisions: Mugabe's failure to repay overdue loans. Moreover, when in 2005-06, Mugabe (egged on by Mbeki) tried to clear $210 million in extreme arrears (with more than $1 billion in other arrears to the IMF and World Bank still outstanding), he had not put in place neoliberal economic policies required by the IMF for ongoing support. My own understanding is that at no time did the US have to exercise the veto over IMF loans it has been notorious for in other cases. The ``sanctions'' Mamdani describes were simply not a factor -- Mugabe had himself imposed sanctions on himself by not repaying the Bretton Woods Institutions starting in 1999, and by adopting non-neoliberal economic policies. In any case, ``sanctions'' by the Bretton Woods Institutions should be no barrier to a country's growth, if it is managed properly, as Argentina showed after its 2002 default on $130 billion in foreign loans including IMF loans -- following which it led Latin America in recovery from the ``lost'' 1980s-90s neoliberal era

But instead of Mugabe following a principled strategy linked to other Third World leaders in a debtors' cartel, as Jubilee South (and Julius Nyerere and Fidel Castro) advocated, there was a simple reason: Mugabe ran out of forex. In 1998, Zimbabwe paid more in debt servicing than any country in the world (as a percentage of GDP) aside from Brazil and Burundi. Having stopped repaying -- except for the silly strategy of partial IMF repayments in 2005-06 -- naturally arrears increased dramatically.