How ZANU-PF leaders have never been able to ‘coup-proof’ themselves

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

History in ZANU-PF is not merely a record of past events; it is a relentless blueprint that repeats itself with tragic predictability.

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An intense public debate currently surrounds whether President Emmerson Mnangagwa is engaged in a systematic effort to ‘coup-proofing’ his administration.

Observers and insiders question if his executive maneuvers can truly insulate him from the formidable power of the military.

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Today, the president systematically reshuffles the security command.

He reassigns top commanders suspected of allegiance to Vice President Constantino Chiwenga while surrounding himself with trusted allies.

This talk persists because a familiar political theater is unfolding.

On the surface, these ongoing maneuvers look like the decisive acts of a master tactician taking total control of the state.

In reality, they are the classic symptoms of a trap that no ZANU-PF leader has ever managed to escape.

It is the hubris of believing one can permanently outsmart the military apparatus that created them.

This delusion began decades ago with Ndabaningi Sithole—the founding president of ZANU.

During the height of the liberation struggle, Sithole recognized the immense danger of allowing a distinct, radicalized military wing to dictate political survival.

He actively sought to prevent the military commanders from exercising independent influence within the political arm of the nationalist movement.

Sithole utilized structural mechanisms like the Dare reChimurenga—the supreme external political council—to ensure that military planning and ZANLA operations remained strictly subordinate to civilian political authority.

He resisted any attempts by commanders to sit in the core political decision-making organs of the party, attempting to keep the gun firmly beneath the briefcase.

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Yet the commanders in the training camps and bases of Tanzania and Mozambique rejected this civilian containment.

They viewed political leadership through a pragmatic, militarized lens.

Deciding Sithole had outlived his purpose through his moderate tendencies, they did not debate him in a committee room.

They discarded him through the Mgagao Declaration of 1975.

Sithole believed his civil title and structural rules protected him from the barracks.

He was fatally naive.

The gun spoke, and power passed to Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe learned a very different lesson from Sithole’s abrupt ousting.

He saw firsthand the raw, decisive power of the military over the political leadership.

Even after taking over ZANU’s reins during the liberation struggle, Mugabe sought to tightly manage and contain the military commanders to ensure they did not eclipse his political authority.

Throughout the war and into the early transition, the political leadership worked to keep iconic ZANLA commanders like Josiah Tongogara strictly bound to operational duties.

They deliberately limiting the commanders’ footprint in supreme political organs to prevent them from seizing absolute control of the nationalist movement’s steering wheel.

Yet, once in power after independence, Mugabe realized he could not simply sideline the gun.

He tried to coup-proof himself by filling the ranks of both ZANLA and the newly independent Zimbabwe Defence Forces with his most trusted ideological and personal allies.

He showered generals with wealth, land, and corporate control while establishing parallel security structures to keep them divided.

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Yet, these same allies eventually turned against him.

When then ZANU-PF Politburo member Jonathan Moyo explicitly warned him in 2017 through the “Blue Ocean” dossier that his trusted comrades were plotting his downfall, Mugabe scoffed.

He never believed the threat.

He never expected the coup to come from within his own inner camp.

In November 2017, when “Operation Restore Legacy” rolled tanks into Harare, Mugabe discovered the bitter truth.

Loyalty in ZANU-PF is never personal; it is institutional and economic.

The moment Mugabe’s actions threatened the military hierarchy’s long-term survival and succession interests, those same loyalists ousted him without hesitation.

Now, Mnangagwa is walking precisely down the same well-trodden path.

Having taken power through the very barrel of Chiwenga’s gun, Mnangagwa understands better than anyone how vulnerable a president is to the men in camouflage.

His response has been textbook coup-proofing.

He systematically strips Chiwenga’s faction of military command and exiles influential generals into diplomatic posts or cabinet portfolios.

Finally, he fills those critical command posts with his own ethnic or factional loyalists.

We have witnessed this in the cases of commanders like Anselem Sanyatwe, Douglas Nyikayaramba, Martin Chedondo, and Engelbert Rugeje.

The lingering shadows of sudden, unexplained deaths among top military stalwarts during recent years have left more questions than answers.

Yet, history delivers a ruthless verdict on this strategy.

Shuffling the high command, surrounding oneself with perceived loyalists, and reassigning dangerous rivals does not eliminate threat.

It merely changes its shape and deepens its resentment.

By continuing to use the security apparatus as the ultimate umpire in party disputes, the establishment reinforces the dangerous foundational myth of ZANU-PF.

That power ultimately flows from the barracks, not from the ballot box or party structures.

ZANU-PF leaders have never been able to coup-proof themselves because the party’s structural DNA is fundamentally militarized.

You cannot tame a tiger while riding on its back.

By relying on the military to secure political survival, every ZANU-PF leader empowers the very force that will eventually depose them.

A leader may believe he has restructured the chess board in his favor.

But as Sithole and Mugabe learned the hard way, the military never forfeits its position as the ultimate kingmaker.

In the fatalistic politics of ZANU-PF, no leader ever outsmarts the gun.

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

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