9, September 2019
Zimbabwe: Mugabe to be buried next Sunday 0
Zimbabwe’s former president Robert Mugabe who died Friday in Singapore at the age of 95, is scheduled to be buried on Sunday, September 15, in a location yet to be determined, the presidency announced Sunday.
“His remains are expected on Wednesday afternoon (in Zimbabwe). The official funeral is scheduled for Saturday, his funeral will take place on Sunday (next),” President George Charamba told AFP, adding that the place of his funeral would be determined by his family.
Since his death, discussions between his family and the government about how to organize his funeral have been taking place.
Heroes Acre or not?
As early as Friday, the Head of State decreed official mourning and awarded him the status of “national hero”, which offers him a place in the “Field of the Nation’s Heroes”, on the edge of the capital, Harare.
This monument, which contains three bronze statues of soldiers donated by North Korea, traditionally houses the graves of veterans of the “War of Liberation”. It has recently been opened to personalities from the arts and sciences.
However, the speaker’s spokesman suggested on Sunday that Robert Mugabe could be buried elsewhere.
The place “will be determined by the family,” Charamba said Sunday.
According to reports in the local press, Robert Mugabe’s family opposed his burial at the “Field of National Heroes”, assuring that the former master of the country wanted to be buried in the village of Zvimba, where he owned a house.
“We, the inhabitants of Zvimba, do not want him to go to the Heroes’ Field (…) for what purpose,” his aunt Josephine Jaricha told AFP on Sunday, “we want him to be buried here.
Since the fall of Robert Mugabe, relations between the former president and his successor, whom he publicly called “traitor”, were notoriously bad.
In November 2017, the army had pushed him out after his decision to dismiss his vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, at the insistence of his second wife, Grace, who coveted the succession of her ninety year old husband.
AFP
11, September 2019
Mugabe a ‘broken soul’ in final years after Zimbabwe ouster 0
Once feared for the all-encompassing power he wielded in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe died a “broken soul,” bereft at his downfall, his allies and relatives say.
Mugabe died in Singapore on Friday at the age of 95, nearly two months before the anniversary of the coup that forced him from power.
He had ruled the southern African country uninterrupted for 37 years and seven months.
During these long decades, Mugabe was Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwe was Mugabe.
But in his twilight years, he became vulnerable and helpless, according to relatives, allies and analysts.
Mugabe bowed to pressure and resigned on November 21, 2017 in a military-backed coup, ending an increasingly tyrannical rule that saw millions leave Zimbabwe to escape repression and economic ruin.
People close to him said the coup hit Mugabe very hard.
He never recovered from the shock that lieutenants whom he had groomed and trusted for years could betray him, they said.
“It was sudden,” his nephew Leo said. “He could not believe that those he trusted most turned again him.”
The coup was his “lowest moment — that period from November 2017 up to his last day… sometimes he would just sit there,” said Mugabe.
“A person who was used to waking up at 4 o’clock every morning, exercises, baths, goes to work and he has the whole country to look at, and suddenly that is abruptly brought to a halt — that is bound to affect.”
Mugabe’s health deteriorated incredibly quickly, he said.
– ‘Blind to reality’ –
The coup had been in the making for months but Mugabe was blind “to reality at that time,” said Ibbo Mandaza, one of the intellectuals who served in Mugabe’s government after independence.
“Mugabe’s last years were years of extreme vulnerability,” said Mandaza, now head of a thinktank, the Southern Africa Political Economy Series (SAPES) Trust.
Shortly after tanks rolled into the streets of Harare in a show of force, one of Mugabe’s allies who sought shelter at the leader’s house, was former education and information minister Jonathan Moyo.
Moyo, who spent time with Mugabe in the post-coup turbulence, said the once-feared autocrat dramatically changed.
“He became unusually introverted,” Moyo said. “He just became instantly withdrawn and non-engaging. He was deep in thought and palpably at a loss.”
He became a “broken soul, an obliterated soul and someone whose world collapsed in front of him and left him helpless,” Moyo said in a phone interview from Kenya where he fled after the coup.
Generals seized power days after Mugabe fired his vice president and there were mass street protests over concern Mugabe was positioning his wife Grace to succeed him.
After days of talks mediated by a Jesuit priest Fidelis Mukonori, Mugabe resigned.
Close to Mugabe for decades, Mukonori mediated most conflicts of Zimbabwean politics, starting in the 1970s with talks between guerrillas and colonial ruler Britain that led to independence in 1980.
Negotiating the exit of the man who ruled for nearly four decades “was not a walk in the park”, he told AFP at a cathedral on the outskirts of Harare.
“It was in the national interest that he decided to resign,” said Mukonori who later visited Mugabe several times after the coup.
– ‘Disappointed, angry’ –
During one visit, Mukonori told Mugabe that he had put on weight. Mugabe replied “‘of course why shouldn’t I, this is something quite good'”, said the priest adding he had a “beautiful smile, he looked calm”.
But others said he struggled to adjust to losing power.
The Catholic vicar general of the archdiocese of Harare, Kennedy Muguti, who used to go to Mugabe’s house to celebrate mass, said the former leader was “disappointed and angry” at the ouster but kept his faith.
“The last mass that he attended before he went to Singapore, I celebrated that mass,” Muguti said.
“He still had his faith even after the frustrations of what happened … the way he was removed from power; yes, he was a disappointed man, he was frustrated, he was angry.”
The anger was palpable during one of Mugabe’s last addresses to the media, on the eve of the July elections, just eight months after he was toppled.
Sitting on a chair, propped up by cushions, a bitter Mugabe vowed not to vote for people in the ruling ZANU-PF party who had “tormented” him.
“I can’t vote for ZANU-PF… what is left? I think it is just (Nelson) Chamisa,” he said referring to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader.
Chamisa himself said that Mugabe, by hinting that he would vote for the opposition, “did realise some of his mistakes.
“There is a danger in overstaying in leadership,” Chamisa said. “You can’t succeed yourself successfully, successively.”
Source: AFP