Will history one day brand Mnangagwa and Chiwenga traitors for ousting Mugabe?

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

This month presents a fascinating study in historical coincidence for Zimbabwe.

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September 6 marked the seventh anniversary of the passing of independent Zimbabwe’s founding leader, Robert Mugabe, while September 15 brings the 84th birthday of current President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Remarkably, it was Mnangagwa—Mugabe’s long-time protégé and right-hand man—who seized power alongside military chief Constantino Chiwenga after ousting his mentor in the November 2017 military coup.

Standing at this convergence of anniversaries, a provocative question emerges: Will Mnangagwa and Chiwenga one day be regarded as traitors for ousting Mugabe?

What brought this seemingly paradoxical idea to mind was my visit last month to Accra, Ghana, where I was attending the Atlas Network ‘Africa Liberty Forum’.

While exploring the historical sites of the city, I visited the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, dedicated to the leader of Africa’s first independent nation.

Alongside his monumental mausoleum and a majestic statue celebrating his legacy, I encountered a second statue of Nkrumah that was deeply unsettling.

The bronze figure was decapitated, its severed head resting on a separate pedestal beside a scarred, headless torso.

Reading the site’s historical markers unlocked the tragic context of the sculpture.

The monument had once stood tall in central Accra until February 24, 1966, when Nkrumah was overthrown in a military and police coup codenamed Operation Cold Chop.

Led by officers such as Colonel Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka and Major Akwasi Afrifa, the mutineers dissolved parliament, suspended the constitution, and established the National Liberation Council (NLC).

Justifying their actions, the junta cited crippling national debt, rampant corruption, economic ruin, political repression, and Nkrumah’s creation of a one-party state.

Nkrumah was forced into exile in Guinea, never to return.

In the immediate aftermath of the coup, crowds celebrated in the streets of Accra, pulling down Nkrumah’s statues—leaving behind the shattered bronze now preserved at the park—and hailing the coup leaders as liberators.

Ghana’s primary gateway was even named Kotoka International Airport to honor the fallen general after he was killed in a 1967 counter-coup.

For decades, the narrative held firm: 1966 was a heroic uprising against an authoritarian tyrant.

Yet, history refused to stay static.

The euphoria of the coup quickly evaporated as the military junta failed to fix the economy.

As infrastructure stagnated and governance deteriorated, ordinary citizens began comparing their daily miseries against the grand industrial, educational, and medical strides achieved under Nkrumah.

Recognizing this shift, subsequent governments began rehabilitating his memory.

The definitive turning point arrived under Jerry Rawlings, who restored democratic rule and actively embraced Nkrumah’s anti-imperialist ethos.

In 1992, Nkrumah’s body was reburied with full honors at the newly built memorial park.

International consensus followed; in 1999, BBC World Service listeners voted Nkrumah “Africa’s Man of the Millennium.”

Meanwhile, declassified Western files revealed that the 1966 coup plotters had collaborated with foreign intelligence agencies, cementing their perception among post-colonial generations not as heroes, but as traitors who conspired against the nation’s founder.

In a poetic culmination, sixty years after the coup, the Ghanaian government officially stripped Kotoka’s name from the airport, reverting it back to Accra International Airport.

Ghana’s narrative had completed a full 360-degree circle.

As I stood before that severed statue in Accra, reflecting on how completely history can rewrite itself, my thoughts turned home to Zimbabwe.

Could we, in time, witness a similar historical reversal?

No one can deny that the removal of Robert Mugabe and the abrupt end of his 37-year authoritarian reign were met with massive, euphoric celebrations across Harare and Bulawayo.

Much like Kotoka in 1966, Chiwenga and Mnangagwa were celebrated as saviors who had delivered the country from tyranny.

The current administration has consistently tried to distance itself from the past, branding its tenure as the “Second Republic” or the “New Dispensation.”

Yet, the parallels between post-1966 Ghana and post-2017 Zimbabwe are increasingly hard to ignore.

To millions of citizens, the Mnangagwa government has proven to be an extension of Mugabe’s worst habits rather than a departure from them.

Political opponents and journalists face arbitrary arrests, peaceful protests are effectively banned, and national elections remain fraught with widespread allegations of manipulation.

Economically, despite official boasts of growth on paper, poverty in Zimbabwe has worsened dramatically since Mugabe’s ouster.

Extreme poverty has surged from 30 percent in 2017 to 49 percent today, while general poverty has escalated from 70 percent to 82 percent, and upper poverty has climbed from 85 percent to a staggering 91 percent.

Corruption under the current administration is widely viewed as even more open and systemic than before.

The 2017 coup plotters claimed they were stepping in to remove “criminals around the president,” yet today, citizens openly question whether those same elements simply took full control of the state.

Crucially, a sentiment once thought unimaginable is quietly emerging: ordinary Zimbabweans comparing Mnangagwa to Mugabe, with a growing number arguing that life was actually better under the late founding president.

Are we, then, charting a course toward our own “Ghana scenario”?

Could Mugabe eventually be recast as a flawed national architect, and those who ousted him remembered as traitors who derailed the state for personal ambition?

Given the brutal legacy of violence, economic collapse, and trauma Mugabe inflicted on generations of Zimbabweans, such a shift may seem improbable today.

But Ghana offers a sobering lesson: time and persistent misrule have a way of reshaping memory.

The perception of Mugabe may not transform within this generation.

Yet as a younger generation emerges untouched by decades of Mugabe’s brutal misrule, and as the promises of a prosperous ‘New Dispensation’ continue to ring hollow, history may well render a verdict that today’s rulers never anticipated.

Failure makes even the worst predecessor look saintly.

• *Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. Please feel free to contact him on +263715667700 or *

  mbofana.tendairuben73@gmail.com