Departure in the year one after the Mugabe era «DiePresse.com

He had become quite calm in Zimbabwe around the 94-year-old "Old Man". In March, Robert Mugabe, the dictator who had been ousted a few months earlier and who had dominated the country since his independence in 1980, complained bitterly of his reinstatement as president. The fact that he did not follow a summons to hear about his involvement in the smuggling of diamonds has hardly been resumed.

Mugabe rises on forgetfulness. However, people have not forgotten their terrible regime – especially those whose families were slaughtered in the 1980s at Matabeleland, the stronghold of the opposition, by the Fifth Brigade, death squads formed by North Korea. In Bulawayo, the provincial capital and the second largest city in the country, the jubilation of the coup against the Potentate and his wife, Grace ("Gucci-Grace"), was so great in November.

The kleptocracy of the Mugabe clan, the once so successful ex-British colony had operated after the line and the thread, had ended after 37 years. Rampant, marked by hyperinflation and capital flight, agricultural misery and shortage, extreme unemployment and the migration of suspended labor from the Commonwealth, Zimbabwe has degenerated into an international outcast. The old guard and the military have stayed in power – and they are now fighting for their legitimacy.

("Die Presse", printed edition, 29.07.2018)