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The former head of state, overthrown in November by his party mates, said Sunday, on the eve of the presidential election, support the opposition.
Credits: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi / AP
Under a granite gazebo in the Mugabe residence, a small, stiff, motionless and unyielding, tightly tie has just been propped up with cushions in an armchair. Is it Robert Mugabe, in flesh and blood, or his copy in wax, on a slightly reduced scale? We can not distinguish his eyes, protected by sunglbades that make him even less animated. He moves a hand a little. So it's him. When he ruled Zimbabwe absolutely, the comrade president liked to have mannequins of his own likeness in different cars when he was moving, a cunning old Sioux mistrust, which proved insufficient to avoid the blow of the state that made him fall from his throne in November. That night, he was not in his armored limousine, but in bed at home, in his home nicknamed Blue Roof (19459013) because of its sky-colored tiles, a half-timbered building. palace, half-pagoda offered by China as a tribute to Zimbabwe's "let's look eastward" policy and the proverbial revolutionary courage of its president
"That a great" No "is needed.
Monday holds the first elections in Zimbabwe since the coup. Emmerson Mnangagwa, the man who seized power, hopes to win both and see his legitimized position. But for eight months, Robert Mugabe is enraged. This forced retreat has nearly killed him. As the poll approached, an idea came to him. Attempt to break what is breakable chances of his party, the Zanu-PF, to win. To achieve this, Robert Mugabe will be forced to make a strange experiment: that of the rules of the free democratic expression which he strove to trample on during his thirty-seven years of power, and which allow him now to firing red bullets on his successors without risk of being arrested or manhandled.
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He begins by slicing, with a slow, muffled, almost painful elocution, the outlines of this coup d'etat which deposed him. Then comes to the conclusion: "tomorrow (day of election) that a great No is required. Nobody is certain to have understood correctly: no, okay, but what? The former dictator slips a little from his chair, a help goes back. He tries to clarify his point: "I will not be able to vote for Zanu-PF. We still press him. But for which candidate, then? He ends up letting go of the answer: for lack of a better one (better, it would be him), he will support Nelson Chamisa, the new leader of the first opposition party, the MDC (Democratic Movement for Change). The man is forty years old. Robert Mugabe could be his grandfather, two generations separate them. He took the head of the MDC in February after the death of cancer from its iconic leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. Mugabe despised Tsvangirai. Now, he pretends to have to call himself to vote for his successor. He takes an obvious pleasure in the maneuver.
Terminally wicked
The new leader of the opposition is a lawyer, pastor, who has not experienced the war of liberation and does not care. He participated in the creation of the MDC in 1999, had the skull fractured by the ruffians of Mugabe's security services in 2007. Today, he ignites the meetings throughout a country of young people. He may also be mocking Robert Mugabe's support, whose successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, repeats that they have made a secret pact. What purpose other than the nuisance may well pursue the former head of state by calling to vote MDC, the party he has done everything to crush?
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This is undoubtedly the last press conference of its existence, and Robert Mugabe unfolds there the last fires of a violence of which he said to be the "professor" and which no longer that the vigor of malice in the terminal phase, on the verge of extinction, like his voice. He savored this last time that journalists around the world are hurrying to hear him. Afterwards, he will only have to dictate memories if he has time, and continue to slowly mummify.
He is not formally badigned to Blue Roof of which he now complains that the blue roof threatens "to crumble within two years" (he is confused with the Chinese, who support Mnangagwa). He goes out only to go to the places he loves: Singapore, Malaysia, Dubai, where he treats his prostate cancer. A few months ago, he ordered the requisition of a plane from the national airline to travel. As if he still commanded. All this is fading away. The power, the strength, the authority, the admiration he aroused, the fear he inspired, are leaving Robert Mugabe as a gaseous compound. This vital energy abandons him. After two hours, it's time to stop. How are we going to take 94-year-old Robert Mugabe, a declared opponent for half an hour, without the cameras capturing his physical weakness? While the gazebo is being riddled, Robert Mugabe, hunched over, is waiting for the departure of this press, which for the last time has come to listen to him, and is reluctant to leave. Like him.
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