Invokes Munhumutapa For 2030 Move
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa at the weekend celebrated his birthday at Great Zimbabwe Monuments in Masvingo in style; with an imperial ambition amid his thinly-veiled bid to extend his rule beyond his 2028 constitutional second term limit to 2030.
This came after he had failed to directly go for a third term, which The NewsHawks started reporting on way back before last year’s general elections in August.
The plan in its detail has yet to be fully exposed, unpacked and debated for the sake of the country’s future.
The constitutional mechanism around a third term manoeuvre is too complex and complicated; Mnangagwa fears it may well be his Waterloo if he pushes too much, hence his repeated plausible deniability.
His latest birthday celebrations were tied to his political ambitions and attempt to secure his legacy.
Mnangagwa was born in Zvishavane on 15 September 1942. So he turned 82 on Sunday.At least officially.
Those who know him better say he was born on the same date in 1938, making him 86.But the story of his date of birth and origins is a mystery; it’s as clear as mud.
There are several versions of where he comes from: Bikita (where his father Mafidi is buried by his own account), Zvishavane, Zambia, or even further up Malawi.
His birthday celebrations were not just an ordinary event, but an occasion pregnant with meaning and ambition, a dangerous political matrix and calculation.
The event was accompanied by a lot of symbolism, ambition and razzmatazz.Mnangagwa deliberately took his birthday event to Great Zimbabwe for symbolic reasons as he wanted to invoke the spirit of the illustrious Mutapa kings who built the monument and use the opportunity for self-aggrandisement.
This came at a critical time when he now calls himself Munhumutapa. His allies and colleagues also now do.
Vice President Constantino Chiwenga has also publicly called him Munhumutapa.
Before going to Great Zimbabwe, Mnangagwa launched a housing project in Masvingo, which he said will be replicated around the country.
At Great Zimbabwe, he launched Munhumutapa Day, a new national calendar event linked to his birthday to be celebrated annually across the nation.
The Munhumutapa Day, which came just a week after Mzilikazi Day, was also meant to counter the growing rise of Ndebele nationalism and attendant centrifugal Mthwakazi forces, symbolised by the annual burgeoning commemorations of legendary 19th century Ndebele King, Mzilikazi Khumalo.
The Zimbabwean government has failed to address the underlying causes of that simmering and explosive issue, which will not go away.
It may explode one day.
The trouble is this negative competition perpetuates the problem of competing narrow and hidebound nationalisms – Shona nationalism, Ndebele nationalism, Rhodesian nationalism, minority tribes nationalisms and others, amid widening ethnic faultlines and class-based issues – at the expense of nation-building and progress.
Zimbabwe’s shaky nationhood further suffers out of these self-serving and ethnic laager identify manoeuvres.
That is when leadership is badly needed to secure nation-building and direction.Given Mnangagwa’s rigid unitary state philosophy and vision, “Chinu chedu or Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo” nativist thinking and clansmenship-based government and appointments, underpinned by naked ethnocentrism, that sort of leadership does not help move the country forward.
It drives Zimbabwe further deep into a quagmire and failure, in which everyone suffers, except the few within the political class – now aristocracy – and their looting cronies.
When a president compares themselves to a king, it is essential to scrutinise their motivations and actions to ensure they prioritise democratic values and the well-being of their citizens, not just themselves.
The forebears of the Mutapa kings, whose ancestors originated from the Great Lakes before migrating down south into the Congo, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and eventually present-day Zimbabwe, ruled Great Zimbabwe.
Later the Mutapa states.
The Great Zimbabwe, ruled by ancestors of modern-day Shona people, lasted around four centuries.
It has been dated from around the 11th century to the middle of the 15th century.Great Zimbabwe shared similar traits to Mapungubwe located just south of the Limpopo River in South Africa.
Before Great Zimbabwe, Mapungubwe,located at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers in South Africa, with different or mixed Venda and Shona heritages as shown by archeological research, was the most important kingdom in southern Africa until it was abandoned in the 14th century.
Historical records show that the Shona people constructed the imposing Great Zimbabwe during the late Iron Age under Munhumutapa, a great emperor whose footprint remains indelibly imprinted across Zimbabwe’s contemporary national landscape.
After Great Zimbabwe, various Mutapa kingdoms, for instance under Nyatsimba Mutota, rose in the north and south-west of Zimbabwe before they declined as well.
As the Mutapa polities declined further, the Ndebele State rose under Mzilikazi and later Lobengula in the southwest, lasting until the advent of colonial rule.
Their legacy, a product of Mfecane wars, looms large in Zimbabwe and bothers Zanu PF leaders and their supporters so much, hence Mnangagwa’s Munhumutapa Day to counter Mzilikazi Day.Yet Mnangagwa is essetnially trying to invoke the heroics of Munhumutapa in his current politics, while seeking to extend his stay in power to 2030.
As a result, Mnangagwa took his birthday party to Great Zimbabwe because he also wanted to launch his Munhumutapa Day project.
This is an ambitious political initiative in which Zimbabweans will now have to celebrate his birthday annually under a new calendar event – Munhumutapa Day date, 15 September.
His curious choice of the name of the day – Munhumutapa Day – is wrapped and drenched in history, symbolism and ambition.It is also further manifested in state institutions, by renaming the Sovereign Wealth Fund, Mutapa Investment Fund, for instance.
The underlying political motive is to create an aura of imperial hegemony, dominance, divinity of Kingship and invincibility to reign in perpetuity.
This will aid and abet his 2030 project which may well end up as presidency for life. That is Mnangagwa’s ambition. He is a proper Mugabe protege.
Although Mnangagwa plotted with the military to oust the late former president Robert Mugabe through a coup in November 2017, he is the best student the late dictator ever produced.
Mnangagwa, who was Mugabe’s chief enforcer, learnt and forgot nothing from the Gushungo monarchy.
Everything that Mnangagwa does at the moment, he is trying to emulate Mugabe directly and indirectly.
Mugabe would be proud in his grave that his legacy – as tragic and devastating as it maybe – is being held intact and perpetuated by Mnangagwa who represents, as many analysts and journalists said in 2017 during the coup, continuity, not change.
So it was a surreal to see him take his birthday to Great Zimbabwe, a historical seat of power for monarchs, yet a familiar thing in Africa, a continent with some of the world’s longest-serving leaders.
Sub-Saharan Africa is currently home to many of the world’s longest-ruling heads of state.
Since 1960, for instance, 14 heads of state across sub-Saharan Africa have ruled for over 30 years.Five sitting African heads of state have been in power for more than three decades each: Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo in Equatorial Guinea, Paul Biya (Cameroon), Denis Sassou Nguesso (Republic of Congo), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), and Isaias Afwerki in Eritrea.
Having ruled for 45 years so far under a new term which will take him to 2050, Nguema (82) is the longest-serving president in Africa and the world at the moment.By 2050, he would be 50 years in office.
At 91 years old, Cameroon President Paul Biya – in power for 42 years – is the oldest head of state in the world.
Congo Brazzaville President Dennis Sassou-Nguesso (80) has also been there for a long time.
He has been in office for 40 years, half his life.Like several of his colleagues in this list, Yoweri Museveni, the President of Ugandan, came into power on a path paved by war.
Museveni (80) has been power for 38 years.Isaias Afwerki (78) has ruled the roost in Eritrea for 31 years.
Sub-Saharan Africa is home to many of the world’s longest-ruling heads of state. At 82, Mnangagwa is trying to extend his rule by two more years through the back door, eventually to be president for life like Mugabe tried to.
Many African countries struggled with transfers of power in their first half century after independence.
From Ghana, Zimbabwe to Namibia, succession has been a big problem in Africa.Leaders who gained recognition during national movements for independence consolidated power and bound their own positions in office with their countries’ national identities.
By the turn of the 21st century, the trend of longest-running and entrenched leaders had spread far across the region, with Zimbabwe and Angola in Sadc leading the pack, entrenching despotism, human rights abuses, corruption, instability, societal divisions, and economic failure.
The trend has been thwarted in some countries, in part due to sustained pressure by civil society groups and regional blocs, as well as coups, but the global rise in authoritarianism threatens to undo that change.
Zimbabwe only secured Mugabe’s removal through a coup, ironically led by Mnangagwa.Yet it was change without change; the more things changed, the more they remained the same.
Mnangagwa’s plan could also be about trying to create a family dynasty.In two African countries, Gabon and Togo, family dynasties have ruled for more than 50 years, while leaders in other countries are priming family members to follow in their footsteps.
Gnassingbe Eyadema, Togolese president for 38 years, died in 2005 at the age of 69.His son, Faure Gnassingbé, succeeded him as president.
Last month, Gnassingbe signed a controversial new constitution which eliminates presidential elections.
It is a move that analysts say will allow him to extend his family’s six-decade-long rule.
In Gabon, Omar Bongo ruled for almost 42 years, from 1967 until his death in 2009.His son Ali Bongo Ondimba took over and ruled for 14 years before he was ousted by the military last year.
The current transitional president, Brice Oligui, took power in a coup on 30 August 2023 from Ondimba.
Part of the problem in these African countries is that their leaders ruled them like their farms, through ethnic and family networks amid patronage, corruption and looting.
That’s what Mnangagwa is currently doing in Zimbabwe, risking a similar fate as other African leaders before him.
Mnangagwa, for example, has appointed his son and nephew as ministers, while his wife First Lady Auxillia is allowed to crudely usurp government functions and constitutional duties of elected officials, for instance through trips to Iran and Belarus where she represented Zimbabwe at the highest levels.
Clearly, Mnangagwa has not learnt anything from what happened to Mugabe and to other similar leaders.
Mugabe was toppled for overstaying and trying to do exactly what Mnangagwa is attempting at the moment – clinging to power.
In 2017, Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos stepped down after 38 years in office.
His family lost everything after that, including his daughter Isabel dos Santos, at one time the richest woman in Africa.Mugabe was overthrown after 37 years in power, his family reduced to underdogs.
Two years later, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir was ousted after three decades in power. In 2021, Chad’s Idriss Déby, who also ruled for 30 years, died mysteriously following a battlefield clash with rebels.
Though the frequency of coups had declined over the past two decades, they are now again on the rise, with 10 attempted takeovers on the continent since 2020, including in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.
Most recently, in August 2023, Gabon’s president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, was ousted by the military after nearly 14 years in office.
Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, himself a former military leader who however later brought democracy to his country, says Zimbabwe re-opened the coup floodgates in Africa.
Mnangagwa is not any different from most of these leaders, his mindset of staying for long in power and running a country like a spaza shop is on display and evident.
Now he has taken matters to a whole new level, comparing himself to ancient kings to justify hanging onto power and perhaps his ambition to die in there.Mnangagwa now fancies himself as the latter-day King of Zimbabwe, having been prince under Mugabe for 37 years.
In his bid to entrench himself in power to enjoy the trappings of office and access to state resources, Mnangagwa misses the irony of claiming in public that he is a constitutionalist when he came in through a coup and is now openly posturing as Munhumutapa, the very opposite of democracy.
There is a world of a difference between a king in a monarchy and a president in a constitutional republic.
These differences reflect fundamental variations in governance, accountability, and representation between monarchies and democratic republics.
Some of the key differences between a king and an elected president: Source of power, term of office, representation, symbolism, legitimacy, checks and balances, accountability, separation of powers, decision-making and succession.
While comparing himself to Munhumutapa might have a symbolic significance, invoke historical legacy and a centralised unitary state arrangement, the downside is overwhelming.
The Munhumutapa symbolism also speaks to authoritarian tendencies, seeking absolute power and control.
It also invokes inflated egoism and self-aggrandisement, and cult of personality: Creating a persona of infallibility and invincibility.
This promotes disregard for democratic institutions, which means undermining checks and balances, and constitutionalism.
Significantly, it brings up the desire for lifelong rule: Kings typically hold power for life amid abuse of office, human rights violations, instability and international condemnation and isolation.
That is why, for instance, Louis XIV, Napoleon Bonaparte and all these African dictators, including Mugabe, were booted out of power unceremoniously and with political drama.
Mnangagwa must learn correct lessons from history, not have selective amnesia.It may not end well for him if he continues on that path.
– The NewsHawks Editorial.
