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Robert Mugabe resigned as Zimbabwe’s president in November 2017, following a military action called Operation Restore Legacy. This article examines the motivations and dynamics of Operation Restore Legacy, which it characterizes as a coup by military generals that had significant commonalities with historical coups in Africa. This characterization, which is informed by the accounts of coup participants and a reading of the literature, challenges interpretations of the coup as ‘a non-coup-coup’, ‘very Zimbabwean’, or ‘special’. The article argues that the coup was a vote of no confidence in Mugabe’s leadership, which succeeded because soldiers from Zimbabwe’s 1970s independence war subscribed to the coup’s stated ideal to restore liberation struggle principles in the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front party as well as party members who had been sidelined. Liberation war veterans held decisive army and air force command posts when the coup occurred. The article’s emphasis on liberation struggle principles as a crucial determinant of the coup’s success is a counterpoint to game theoretic approaches to coup dynamics that disregard political beliefs as a consequential factor in the realization of coups. In respect of motivations, the article advances interrelating motives and contends that the coup’s catalyst was Mugabe’s refusal to meet his generals on 13 November 2017, for vital talks on widening differences between both parties. Sealing off dialogue catalyzed the coup.

This article revisits the history of the 1974–75 mutiny in the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA). The mutiny was primarily led by field commanders Thomas Nhari, Dakarai Badza and Caesar Molife. Dominant accounts on the mutiny maintain that the colonial Rhodesian Security Forces (RSF) influenced Nhari and Badza to stage the revolt. The article traces part of the life history of Rex Nhongo/Solomon Mujuru (a ZANLA commander who interacted with the mutineers) in order to challenge these long-standing accounts of the mutiny. The article highlights the import of conflicting understandings of loyalty in the mutiny, arguing that the revolt was not an RSF scheme. Instead, the mutineers took advantage of the absence of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and ZANLA leaderships, which were abroad on various transnational diplomatic engagements in countries sympathetic to Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, to stage a revolt. The mutiny could have been avoided had the ZANLA commander, Josiah Tongoga...

This special issue of JSAS offers new transnational perspectives on southern Africa’s wars of national liberation.1 It does so by bringing fresh evidence to bear on the histories of Zimbabwean, Nam...

Zimbabwe is routinely depicted as a country that held considerable potential for socio-economic development following its independence from colonial rule in 1980. Today this promise is all but erod...

Since the late 1990s Zimbabwean politics has been shaped by the political succession war raging within the ruling ZANU PF party. The internal fight to succeed President Robert Mugabe pitted a faction controlled by retired General Solomon Mujuru, who was fronting his wife Joice Mujuru, against another faction led by Emmerson Mnangagwa, a government minister. The competition between these factions reached a crucial stage in 2014, when Mugabe dismissed Joice Mujuru as Vice-President and purged her key allies in ZANU PF and the government. This article examines the role of state intelligence in this struggle, arguing that the Military Intelligence (MI) leadership, which supported Mnangagwa in the succession conflict, placed Joice Mujuru under surveillance and constructed a controversial gendered case to destroy her bid to succeed Mugabe. In contrast, some elements in the principal civilian intelligence institution, the Central Intelligence Organization, conducted a surveillance operation against the Mnangagwa faction in order to support Joice Mujuru’s power bid. The article widens scholarship on the security sector’s political interventions in Zimbabwean politics, while emphasizing how the gendered dimensions of surveillance can reinforce patriarchal national politics. PRESIDENT ROBERT MUGABE has led the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) party and Zimbabwe since 1977 and 1980, respectively. Mugabe, a nonagenarian, is Africa’s oldest serving president. The length of his incumbency among current African leaders is surpassed only by the tenures of Paul Biya (Cameroon), Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (Equatorial Guinea) and Jose Eduardo dos Santos (Angola). Rising domestic discontent with Mugabe’s seemingly interminable leadership was one of the reasons for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party’s formation in 1999 and the rise to prominence of its leader Morgan Tsvangirai as an alternative national *Miles Tendi (miles.tendi@sant.oxon.org) is a Departmental Lecturer in African Politics in the Department of International Development, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford. African Affairs, 1–22 doi: 10.1093/afraf/adv074 © The Author 201 . Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved 1 6 African Affairs Advance Access published February 12, 2016

Robert Mugabe is often presented in the international media as the epitome of the popular leader gone awry: the independence struggle hero who seemed initially a progressive egalitarian, but has gradually been corrupted through his attachment to power during a long and increasingly repressive spell in office. This article applies notions of ‘toxicity’ and ‘bad leadership’ to Mugabe, in an attempt to locate him within a comparative and historically-informed perspective.

Le present article explore les divers roles joues par la violence lors des recentes elections presidentielles au Zimbabwe. Le premier tour a ete marque par l’absence relative de violence d’Etat, alors que le second a connu une violence extreme, orchestree par le parti au pouvoir. Les comparaisons parfois faites entre le Zimbabwe et le Kenya nous semblent trompeuses: la violence electorale au Zimbabwe n’etait pas une violence ethnique et elle ne provenait pas de forces exterieures a l’Etat. Les sequelles sur les institutions, les partis politiques et sur les conceptions populaires de la citoyennete influenceront profondement la nature de tout futur accord de partage de pouvoir.