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Mysterious 'accident' offers window on Zimbabwe politics
Michael Wines, International Herald Tribune
August 09, 2007

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/09/africa/zimbabwe.php

JOHANNESBURG: With all the problems besetting Zimbabwe these days, the untimely death of Armstrong Gunda, flattened by a freight train in late June, might seem to deserve only passing mention. His family, however, begs to differ.

Late last month, the Gundas mourned his passing in a cryptic front-page advertisement in the state-run Bulawayo Chronicle. "It's now 29 days since you were tragically killed in a mysterious train accident," the ad stated. "Little did we know that instead of the board you were going to chair on 21/06/07 and picking up the kid from school, you were going to die."

The mysterious accident, as the ad twice described it, has not gone unnoticed by Zimbabwe's ruling elite: Brigadier General Gunda, 50, was the commander of President Robert Mugabe's presidential security guard. And barely six days before his death, members of the guard were publicly accused by the government of plotting to end Mugabe's 27-year reign.

Gunda's sudden departure is one nugget of information analysts are studying as they try to determine whether Zimbabwe's economic and political meltdowns have loosened Mugabe's grip on power. The early consensus is that they have not - at least not yet.

Even disregarding his nation's economic collapse, however, Mugabe, now 83, faces serious and rising opposition to his plan to run for another term as president next March. Gunda's death is seen by some experts as a signal that threats to Mugabe's re-election will be crushed. Some political analysts suspect that the coup plot was engineered by Mugabe's inner circle to make just that point.

"He's supported by a coterie of securocrats and military officers who are entirely loyal, however serious the situation may be," one Zimbabwean analyst who insisted on anonymity said in an interview. Rumors of instability, the analyst said, reflect the intense jockeying to succeed Mugabe more than any real threat to his power. Still, the expert and others say that Zimbabwe's economic disintegration could seriously undermine Mugabe if it continues for very long, in part because it threatens the vast riches amassed by officials of the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF.

Mugabe's two chief rivals, both among the nation's wealthiest people, still hope to edge him from power before the proposed March elections. One, Vice President Joyce Mujuru, is married to Solomon Mujuru, a retired general with deep ties to the military dating to Zimbabwe's liberation wars in the 1970s. The other, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is the rural housing minister, but his power lies in his influence in the Central Intelligence Organization, the state security apparatus.

Mugabe has played the Mujuru faction against Mnangagwa's camp, and the purported coup attempt, which led to the arrest of as many as 15 civilians and soldiers, is seen by some as part of that strategy.

Still, the two rivals have managed to keep the ZANU-PF hierarchy from formally anointing Mugabe for another term, and Mugabe faces a series of tests in the next six months that could help unravel his control.

This month, southern African heads of state will gather in Lusaka, and Zimbabwe's meltdown will be atop their list of issues. The same group was widely reported to have told Mugabe at a meeting in March that he should plan a graceful exit from power; the pressure is likely to increase sharply at the next session.

After that meeting, Parliament will convene, very likely to consider legislative or constitutional changes that would cement Mugabe's control. His cadre of loyalists are floating a proposal that would certify Mugabe as president for life. Any defeat in Parliament would leave him severely weakened.

ZANU-PF leaders will convene again in December. If any question of who will run Zimbabwe remains undecided, that meeting is expected to resolve it. All that assumes, of course, that Mugabe can defeat by far the most serious threat to his power: a collapsing economy that has decimated the poor, and is now beginning to gnaw at the rich.

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