His reputation for being even more authoritarian than Mugabe earned him the nickname “Crocodile” in Zimbabwe. Emmerson Mnangagwa, clinging to power, is leaving for a second term as head of the southern African country. Dull speaker, the 80-year-old president emerged victorious on Saturday (52.6%) from a tense ballot, whose opposition and international observers denounced the irregularities. “Mnangagwa Emmerson Dambudzo of the Zanu-PF party is hereby declared President of the Republic of Zimbabwe,” commission chairperson Justice Chigumba proclaimed on Saturday evening.
The first opposition party in Zimbabwe has already announced that it rejects these results. “We did not sign the results because they are skewed […]. We cannot accept the results,” Promise Mkwananzi, spokesperson for the Citizens’ Coalition for Change (CCC), the party of Nelson Chamisa, President Mnangagwa’s main rival in the polls, told AFP.
For months before the presidential and legislative elections, his critics accused him of implementing a crackdown on dissent, stifling the desire for change in a country mired in hyperinflation and economic slump. “He’s a very repressive and authoritarian figure,” said Brian Raftopoulos, a Zimbabwean political researcher.
Supporter of a hard line and heavyweight of the party in power since independence (Zanu-PF), Mnangagwa had succeeded, thanks to a coup, the strongman Robert Mugabe, dismissed in 2017.
The war of succession which opposed him to Grace Mugabe, wife of the nonagenarian president, had nevertheless resulted, initially, in his dismissal from the post of vice-president. Fearing for his life, Mnangagwa fled to Mozambique. His son, who accompanies him, described him after a night journey through the mountains, sitting at a bus stop, dusty suit and torn shoes, with only a briefcase filled with dollars.
But the situation is reversed in a few weeks: the generals take power and designate Mnangagwa. The country is witnessing the triumphant return of the former dolphin supported by the ruling party.
The following year, Mnangagwa won the presidential election with 50.8%. The opposition disputes the results, the army kills six demonstrators. Justice validates the ballot.
This election – already pitting Mnangagwa against his young rival Nelson Chamisa, now 45 – carried the country’s hopes for more freedoms and an economic recovery, quickly dissipated.
The mineral-rich country remains overwhelmed by shortages of power, gasoline, bread or medicine. Demonstrations against the high cost of living are violently repressed. The opposition accuses the new regime of surpassing Mugabe in brutality. Laws deemed “liberticidal” have recently been passed. Activists, elected officials and intellectuals are increasing their stays in prison. The latest campaign has been marked by an unqualified crackdown on dissent.
The president blames Western sanctions on Zimbabwe for preventing the battered economy from recovering. Washington and the EU claiming to target only those involved in corruption and abuse of rights. Mnangagwa does not have the ideological vision of Mugabe, believes Mr Raftopoulos. “It relies on militarization and securitization, not on a strong intellectual message,” he says.
Since independence in 1980, he had been a close friend of Mugabe. He chained key positions in the state system.
His mentor was suspicious of his ambition and sidelined him for a time, but he chose him to lead his campaign in 2008. Mugabe lost the first round and Mnangagwa reportedly oversaw the wave of violence and intimidation that forced the opposition to withdraw of the second round.
Ex-Minister of Defense in particular, he retains close ties with the intelligence services he headed.
In public, he invariably wears a striped scarf in the national colors and wants to build an image of an approachable politician.
While campaigning in 2018, he narrowly escaped an explosion that killed two people. The previous year, he had already survived tasting an ice cream suspected to be poisoned.
The thick octogenarian with dyed hair calls himself a Christian and says he abstains from alcohol six months a year.
Born in 1942, Emmerson Dambudzo (“adversity” in the Shona language) Mnangagwa trained in guerrilla warfare, particularly in China, before joining the fight for independence. Arrested by the British, hung upside down from a butcher’s hook, he establishes his legend.
After blowing up a train, he was arrested in 1964 and sentenced to a commuted death sentence in prison, due to his young age.
After independence, he is accused of being the architect of the “atrocities of Gukurahundi” in the 1980s, when soldiers massacred some 20,000 civilians from the Ndebele minority to suppress opposition in the west of the country. .
