Zimbabwe dismisses rumours of coup

Zimbabwe today dismissed reports of an imminent coup, saying this was part of a wider plot to destabilise the country.

Various online media this week carried claims of an imminent military coup backed by the opposition and disgruntled former members of the ruling ZANU-PF party.

Home Affairs Minister, Kazembe Kazembe said not only were the rumors of a coup false, but they were also meant to instigate it and trigger instability in the country.

Kazembe spoke while flanked by members of the Working Committee to the National Security Council commonly referred to as the Joint Operations Command (JOC) including Commander Defence Forces General Philip Valerio Sibanda, Air Marshall Elson Moyo, Zimbabwe Republic Police Commissioner-General Godwin Matanga and Central Intelligence Organisation Director-General Isaac Moyo.

The JOC is the supreme organ for the coordination of state security in Zimbabwe.

“We would like to take this opportunity to remind and assure the nation and the international community at large that Zimbabwe under the new dispensation and the able stewardship of President ED Mnangagwa is stable and peaceful internally,” Kazembe said.

“The purveyors of this false coup narrative claim that former members of ZANU-PF who fell by the wayside and largely went into self-imposed exile at the advent of the new dispensation in November 2017 are coming together in a united front with some senior government leaders, some members of the security forces of Zimbabwe and elements of the opposition formation.”

Kazembe added: “This is in a bid to taint the image of His Excellency the President, to undermine the legitimacy of the government and to render the country ungovernable. They further claim that once the contrived coup d’état is executed they intend to establish a national transitional authority which will then govern Zimbabwe, minus ZANU-PF, for an unspecified period. Of course, nothing could be further from the true reality of Zimbabwe’s security situation now and for the foreseeable future.

“Indeed both claims of a military coup and a transitional authority in the making amount to mere agenda-setting by merchants of discord amongst our people with the support of their foreign handlers, they are completely unfounded. For the avoidance of doubt there is no coup in the making nor is there any form of transitional authority or inclusive government that is being contemplated by the new dispensation except in the fertile imagination of the purveyors of this false narrative.”

Kazembe warned purveyors of the coup narrative including self-exiled former Cabinet Minister Saviour Kasukuwere and opposition MDC-Alliance member Job Sikhala and their other accomplices that the long arm of the law would catch up with them.

He said a number of civil society organisations, local and international self-proclaimed prophets, and certain diplomatic missions were also actively supporting and peddling the false coup narrative.

The false coup narrative, he said, was also part of a larger agenda to discredit the government including staging fake abductions.

“Some foreign diplomats accredited to Zimbabwe have quite often not shied from engaging in anti-government activism which renders it difficult to differentiate them from card-carrying members of the opposition. They also have in the process brazenly jettisoned any semblance of diplomatic impartiality and finesse in blatant violation of the peremptory norms of international law. This has resulted in the quite surprising adversarial stance and policies that some of the big powers are now projecting and unashamedly pronouncing against Zimbabwe,” he said.- New Ziana

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