Why Zimbabwe’s ‘not-a-coup’ military takeover is nothing to celebrate
As leader of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe has survived longer than Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao in China. If it is coming to an end — which seems likely given his apparent inability to emerge from house arrest after the military took charge — it is worth reflecting on the mistakes he made to end such a remarkable run. Daniel Treisman, a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) political scientist, argued in a recent paper that most dictators fall for reasons proving that they are all too human: hubris, a propensity for needless risk, liberalisation impulses that lead to a slippery slope, picking the wrong successor, counterproductive violence. Mugabe, 93, is no exception; he groomed the wrong person to succeed him and relied too much on his military. When he tried to change his pick, the generals decided they had had enough. Almost throughout Mugabe’s 37-year rule, Emmerson Mnangagwa — like Mugabe, a veteran of the war for Zimbabwe’s independence from the UK — was the dictator’...
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