Real Dictators - Robert Mugabe Part 4: A Game of Thrones

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

At the age of 93, Mugabe’s days in office are numbered. But the succession crisis threatens to tear Zimbabwe apart. In South Africa, exiles hatch an extraordinary plan to oust him. And when the dictator’s own wife throws her hat into the ring, Mugabe’s house of cards will begin tumbling down… A Noiser production, written by Duncan Barrett. This is Part 4 of 4. For ad-free listening, exclusive content and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's November the 7th, 2017, a little after midnight. We're on the border of Zimbabwe and Mozambique, a desolate, scrubby wasteland littered with landmines. A 73-year-old man is about to attempt an illegal crossing. If he fails, it will almost certainly cost him his life. In one hand he clutches a Louis Vuitton briefcase. It's critical that the contents of the bag make it over the border with him. His two grown-up sons are with him, and also a guide, indispensable given the minefields

all around. They follow a narrow dirt path into the bush. Scrambling on his belly to avoid the glare of police searchlights, the man is living up to his old wartime nickname, the Crocodile. He can scarcely believe it's come to this after decades at the heart of government. 48 hours ago, Emerson Mnangagwa was the vice president of Zimbabwe.

Now he's fleeing for his life. But he has a plan. Once the crocodile and his sons make it to safety, a letter will be released. Officially it's addressed to President Mugabe, but the message is clearly intended for the Zimbabwean people. Let us bury our differences and rebuild a new and prosperous Zimbabwe, Manangagwa will tell them. A country that is tolerant to divergent views.

A country that respects opinions of others. A country that does not isolate itself from the rest of the world because of one stubborn individual who believes he is entitled to rule this country until death. He signs off, I will be communicating with you soon and shall return to Zimbabwe to lead you. and shall return to Zimbabwe to lead you. It's a bold claim, wildly optimistic, but, as it turns out, accurate.

Within a few weeks, Manangagwa will be back in Zimbabwe to take up the mantle of president. After almost four decades, Robert Mugabe's reign of terror will finally come to an end. From Noisa, this is the final part of the Mugabe story. And this is Real Dictators. Let's rewind three years to December 2014. In Zimbabwe, the crocodile has just been appointed Robert Mugabe's number two, but the circumstances surrounding his promotion would give anyone pause. The last vice president, a popular war veteran called Joyce Majuru, has seen her political career collapse around her.

The architect of her downfall has been none other than the First Lady of Zimbabwe, Grace Mugabe. Ironically, the same Grace Mugabe who helped get Majuru appointed in the first place. Dr. Chipo Dendere. So Grace Mugabe is very influential in getting the first female vice president. They bring in Grace Mugabe to campaign for the team. They groom her. And at some point, Grace Mugabe is probably thinking,

well, if you're grooming me to work for you, I could be grooming me to work for me. If she can do it, so I could do it myself. Over the past two decades, Grace has been known primarily as a profligate consumer. Her legendary shopping sprees and obsessions with luxury brands have earned her the nicknames The First Shopper and Gucci Grace. But until now, there was no sign she had political ambitions of her own. I like to think of it as the transition from Gucci Grace to Comrade Grace. There's one speech where she says, people say that I'm greedy and I want to be president,

but why can't I be? You know, I'm a citizen too. And it's like, oh, no, Grace, you're a citizen, but you don't have any liberation credentials and these people are not going to let you do that. For almost 40 years, Zimbabwe's ruling party, ZANU-PF, has drawn its legitimacy from the liberation war. We kicked out the colonialists, therefore we are the fathers of the nation. So the thinking is gone. But Grace has allied herself with a group of more youthful politicians within the party,

an association known as G40, because they were too young to have participated in the struggle. Dr. Sue Onslow. Generation 40. This was a particular cohort of younger politicians with their own economic and political vested interests. So she fitted within the rivalries and factions and ongoing struggles within the political wing of Zanupieff's movement. A shameless narcissist, Grace's competitiveness with Joyce Majuru reaches new heights when her rival completes a PhD. Fortunately, being a dictator's wife carries certain privileges. Professor Stephen Chan.

When Joyce Majuro became Dr. Majuro, Grace instantly had to become Dr. Mugabe. And the university was basically bludgeoned into insisting that this was a real PhD. I read it and I recognised immediately which academic had written it. Quite clearly, this was not her work, but she was so consumed by jealousy that her rival was now entitled to be called doctor. It just gave you a sense of what kind of president she would have made, a vain glorious one, even more so than her husband. president she would have made, a vain glorious world, even more so than her husband. Douglas Rogers has closely examined Mugabe's final days in power.

He is the author of Two Weeks in November, the astonishing untold story of the operation that toppled Mugabe. Rogers traces the dictator's ultimate downfall back to his wife's political meddling three years earlier. It was a sort of curtain raiser to what would happen in 2017 because Grace Mugabe had this no-holds-barred attack on Joyce Majuru and basically destroyed her through media, through propaganda campaign, through threats. And it was horrifying to people like Mnangagwa or the war veterans because Joyce Majuru herself was a war veteran. Her claim to fame as a guerrilla fighter was that she had shot down a Rhodesian helicopter. Later on, that was called into question by allies of Grace Mugabe. Former allies and comrades were now turning on each other and denouncing their own service in the liberation war

and saying, oh no, that person made that up and that's not true. And it was brutal and very Shakespearean in that these were friends turning on each other for things they had done 40 years earlier. So now you've got Jason Judu, she gets ousted. I think she wasn't well liked within the ZANUF PF male power dominance. Her husband is killed in a very painful death in a fire. He had been a top army general, but also his wife was ambitious.

So he gets eliminated. I think there are just a number of these eliminations, a number of top party people being kicked out. And then Grace Mugabe is rising. And I think the question now was, what do you do about Grace? While Grace Mugabe is making a name for herself on the political scene, her husband is very much in decline. Mugabe was very old and frail. He's in his 90s. He would like slur his speeches.

He'd fall asleep in meetings. He'd fallen over. People knew he didn't have long. Jerry Jackson. You'd see him in an interview. He'd be propped up with cushions and slumped down in the seat. Everybody was just waiting for him to die. He was a shadow of himself,

but was still being paraded up and down and out and about. And his wife, Grace, was sort of fronting him when they went out and spoke. And as he got more frail, she came more to the front. Somehow, by fair means or foul, Zimbabwe's president keeps on going. No one could believe how long he was living. He was going to China all the time for treatment. So all these rumors about, what is he being fed the blood of virgins or something?

Because what is something weird is going on? How can he still be alive? The theories that we formed, consulting with doctors, cancer of some sort, probably what was also involved in his treatment in Singapore was whole body blood transfusions. Just replacing his blood, lock, stock and barrel.

A cocktail of anti-inflammatories, steroids, certain forms of amphetamine, all kinds of hormones. So probably a whole cocktail. We should keep him going for a couple of months after he got back before he would need treatment again. In other words, this is a frail man pretending not to be frail.

Whatever it entails, Mugabe's treatment is expensive. In one six-month period, he clocks up over 100,000 air miles, earning himself the nickname President of the Skies. Travelling with an entourage of 40 people, at a cost of $6 million per trip, the bill to the Exchequer approaches nine figures.

By now though, Zimbabweans are used to a culture of excess from their rulers. The exclusive gated community of Borrowdale, where Mugabe and Grace live, is a playground for the super rich in the midst of one of the world's poorest countries. The ruling party leaders all lived in these mansions. It's a strange thing to drive around that area of Harare because you think that you're arriving in a poor,

desperately impoverished country. And you see that it's actually quite beautiful and looks in some ways like Beverly Hills. It's completely mad. It makes no sense to own cars. They love cars. Lamborghinis, Maseratis, Rolls Royces. And the roads, you've got to see the roads. The potholes are craters. You can't drive a Maserati. They park them in their driveways and they sit on them and they have their mates around and have beer in their car and stuff. Over the years, Grace Mugabe has become the poster girl for the materialism of the ruling elite. A woman who declared she could only wear thousand dollar Ferragamo shoes because no other brand fitted her narrow feet. Ferragamo shoes, because no other brand fitted her narrow feet. Compared to Mugabe's first wife, Sally, Grace has never been popular.

But she's been tolerated as long as she stays in her lane. In turning against Joyce Majuru and the ZANU-PF old guard, though, Grace has seriously blotted her copybook. Zimbabwe is a fairly conservative, traditional society, very patriarchal. She was disrespectful of her elders. And again, respecting your elders, your tradition, that is part of Zimbabwean culture. And she sort of blew that all up. The idea of Grace taking over was repulsive, I think. She was going after everybody.

She was undressing people in public. She was talking about how army generals, well, you know, we don't care that you fought the war. The war was many, many years ago. I've often wondered if Robert Mukabe had had a son who was a bit older, or if he had nurtured somebody into a son, then Zanupieff would have had a much smoother transition. When Majuro is booted out of government, it's not Grace, but Emma Simenangagwa who takes her place as vice president. For Robert Mugabe, though, there are good reasons for Grace to ultimately take over, beyond the dictum of happy wife, happy life.

Not only will it keep his family name twinned with that of Zimbabwe, but if he lives long enough to see her come to power, she can protect him from prosecution and corruption charges. By 2017, Grace has her sights set on Mnangagwa. The dispute between her G40 faction and the Zanu Old Guard reaches epic proportions. It was a game of thrones within the ruling party, and Grace had her faction, and Mnangagwa had his faction. And those were the warring parties when things came to a head.

Seeing off Majuru was one thing, but in going after the crocodile, Grace and her team have bitten off more than they can chew. For almost 40 years, Mnangagwa has been at the heart of Mugabe's regime. Mnangagwa had been a close ally in Mozambique where the guerrilla camps were. He had sort of run his security detail. After independence, he was always by Mugabe's side. Manangagwa was his protector. And Manangagwa, through the succeeding 37 years, had held pretty much every position in government.

So yeah, they were comrades and allies. But what's a 50-year friendship when your wife doesn't like your old war buddy? The campaign against the vice president begins in July 2017. G40 Slicks Bengali Jonathan Moyo hijacks a Politburo meeting. He screens a devastating video that alleges Meningagua has been plotting a coup. Meningagua's response is to sue Moyo for $3 million and write a long letter to Mugabe proclaiming his innocence. But the rumor refuses to go away.

A few weeks later, Reuters publishes leaked intelligence documents that suggest a secret pact between the Crocodile and Morgan Changaray, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change. After four years of power sharing came to an end in 2013, the MDC have slipped back into their traditional role as Zimbabwe's beleaguered opposition party. Is it possible that Changaray has agreed to work with one of his old ZANU enemies in order to get back into power? Meanwhile, Mnangagwa has received numerous warnings that an attempt on his life is imminent.

Mnangagwa has received numerous warnings that an attempt on his life is imminent. In Zimbabwe, car crashes are the usual modus operandi for dispatching political opponents. So when Mnangagwa starts projectile vomiting at a ZANU-PF rally, it's not immediately clear what the cause is. Airlifted to hospital in South Africa, he's found to have high levels of arsenic in his system. The ice cream served to speakers at the rally came from Grace Mugabe's dairy farm. The First Lady is forced to deny accusations that she deliberately poisoned her rival. Why should I kill Munangagwa, she asks dismissively. Who is Munangagwa on this earth? A month later, though, Grace's language is rather different.

We must deal with this snake, she tells a crowd at Rufaro Stadium, where Zimbabwe's Independence Day was celebrated 37 years earlier. The snake must have his head crushed. In the same way as it had happened against Joyce Majuri, there was this sort of increasing crescendo of personal attacks on Mnangagwa. And she would often do this on stage at political rallies when he was sitting a few seats away from her.

And people in Zimbabwe watched this with horror. It was like a car crash. It was a soap opera. And Mnangagwa just politely would just sit there, taking it all, and people considered him weak, unable to fight back. The fact that she could stand on stages across the country and say, this guy's a dead man.

She literally said at one point, you're a walking dead man for challenging my husband. For the most part, Mugabe studiously avoids getting involved in the battle between his old friend and his wife. But when the crowd at a Bulawayo rally begins to heckle Grace's latest tirade, the President steps in to defend her. Tottering up to the microphone, Mugabe raises a finger in the air, summoning the authority of the stern headmaster. We are denigrated and insulted in the name of Munungagwa?

He asks theatrically. Did I make a mistake appointing him my deputy? Because if I did, I will drop him as soon as tomorrow. At that point, a decision had to be made. Was Mugabe going to side with her or side with Mnangagwa? And what happened was he sided with his wife, Grace, and he fired Mnangagwa. And it was announced on the national broadcaster

that Mnangagwa was being dismissed. So, yeah, he was fired and in the normal circumstances in a normal country, that would have been it. He would have been replaced and retired to his house in the country, right? But this being Zimbabwe, he got word that he was going to be assassinated. He was going to be arrested. Police were coming for him. Manigagu knows better than anyone that such warnings are not to be taken lightly. Meningagua was from ZANU-PF, right? He had himself been responsible for taking people out or giving orders to take people out.

So he knew how the system worked. He knew what was going to happen to him if he stayed. He had to either leave the country or sort of take his chances by staying, and he chose to get out. Within 48 hours, Mnangagwa has made it safely to South Africa. With him is the Louis Vuitton briefcase, whose contents remain a state secret even today. I never found out what was in the briefcase.

Jonathan Moyer, who was a sort of Svengali of the G40 faction, he claimed that there'd been this long plot by Mnangagwa to overthrow Mugabe, and it had been sort of meticulously laid out in this document, and that could have been what's in it. Could have been money, cash, diamonds, who knows? That could have been what's in it. Could have been money, cash, diamonds, who knows? Seeking refuge in South Africa,

Mnangagwa joins the ranks of the millions of Zimbabweans who fled Mugabe's regime. It was again another irony that now Mnangagwa, who was part of this party, ruling party, that had forced these people into exile, was himself now looking for sanctuary in South Africa. A man named Justice Maposa, who was a very wealthy businessman in Johannesburg, had given him sanctuary at his home outside Pretoria. And that's where Meningagua was laying low for the next two weeks.

Meningagua doesn't know it yet, but among the expat community in Johannesburg is a group of Zimbabweans who have been preparing for this moment for years. One of them is human rights lawyer Gabriel Schumbe, who fled the country after he was kidnapped and tortured by Mugabe's police in 2003. More than a decade on, having brought his wife and children to join him in South Africa, Gabriel has grown used to a life in exile. But when he's approached to join the so-called Northgate group, a kind of Ocean's Eleven working to bring down Mugabe from Johannesburg,

he agrees to lend them his legal expertise. I can't go into details because some of the issues regarding my involvement obviously are very sensitive. But there was a coalescing around the idea that Mugabe's time was up. The Northgate group is an extremely broad church, comprising MDC activists, ZANU-PF stalwarts, disgruntled intelligence agents and more. It's a testament to Mugabe's capacity for making enemies that such a wide range of people are willing to work together to depose him. The group takes its name from an unlikely source, the car park of the Northgate Shopping

Centre in Johannesburg, where its two founder members shook hands late one night in the summer of 2016. Theirs is perhaps the most improbable alliance of all, a white South African businessman with links to the MDC and the black Zimbabwean intelligence agent who Mugabe sent to kill him. One of these agents was sent down by his bosses to Johannesburg to assassinate a white businessman who helped fund the MDC.

And what ended up happening was this businessman, I call him Tom Ellis, it's not his real name, he knew he was being followed by these guys, pulled over on a street in Johannesburg and approached the vehicle behind him and said, I know you're following me. Let me buy you a drink. And he spent several months courting them, meeting up with them, talking to them, finding out about their lies. And after several months, one of them eventually admitted to Tom Ellis that he had been

sent to assassinate him. And he'd asked him, well, why didn't you do it? They formed this sort of parking lot pact called the Northgate Declaration, in which they basically say, we're going to work together to make sure that Mugabe is removed and replaced by Emerson Mnangagwa. The intelligence agent, whom Douglas Rogers calls Casper, is a disillusioned veteran of Mugabe's Congo War almost two decades earlier. Still on the payroll of Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Organisation, he now becomes a double agent, working with Ellis to bring down the regime. One of Casper's first jobs is to persuade Gabriel Schumbe to join them Given his history, Gabriel is understandably wary of anyone attached to the CIO

After a few tense, enigmatic encounters, Casper does something that really grabs his attention One evening they go out for a drink Casper motions to a man sitting a few tables away to come and join them One evening they go out for a drink. Casper motions to a man sitting a few tables away to come and join them. Gabriel looks into the stranger's face and begins to shake. It's the man who tortured him for three days more than a decade earlier. And he's standing there with tears in his eyes. Casper's shock tactic works. After meeting with several more disgruntled Mugabe insiders, war veterans, army officers,

intelligence agents, Gabriel decides to come on board. His job will be to provide legal legitimacy to the operation to remove Mugabe. It's crucial that no one uses the word coup. My role was to ensure that even amongst those who would see things differently, that there would be some or at least a fundamental adherence to human rights and respect for divergence of opinions. We may differ even in how to execute whatever is going to happen, but we need to agree that certain principles are respected. Gabriel knows that working with Casper is a risky business.

On Christmas Eve 2016, while still debating whether or not to join the Northgate group, there's an unexpected knock on his front door. I opened the door. I just assumed that it was the security that was at my place, but it wasn't. Somebody came in, then started speaking to me in Shona, which is my home language. I asked what he was there for. He started crowding me inside and he closed the door. So I shouted to my wife and the children to go and hide in the bedroom. And I realized that I had a war on my hands. He was holding a knife.

He pulled out a knife. He was holding it, but I had some martial arts training. And I managed to kick the knife out of his hand. But unfortunately, when I kicked it and I was going for it, he picked up a sculpture, a stone sculpture that was in the house on the table. And he hit me on the head. And I fell down. Gabriel wakes up in hospital, lucky to be alive. Undeterred, he continues meeting with Casper's contacts. Among them is Morgan Changaray, who is in South Africa for medical treatment. The MDC leader has colon cancer and it's terminal.

He reassures Gabriel that he's confident Casper and his team can be trusted. But it's not until late summer 2017, after Emerson Mnangagwi's suspicious bout of vomiting, that Gabriel attends his most important meeting. Kasper invites him to a guesthouse in a leafy Johannesburg suburb, where he finds three smartly dressed Zimbabweans waiting for him. Their white shirts and pressed suit jackets belie their military status. They are a major, a colonel and a brigadier general in the Zimbabwean army. Pretty much top brass.

The soldiers tell Gabriel they're planning an important military operation and they'll soon be calling on him for advice. Advice on what is and isn't legal. Was it a coup? It's a coup that wasn't a coup. Once upon a time there were coups all over Africa right but by 2017 coups were a no-no. You needed legitimacy, you wanted like world governments to support your government. Caspar knew that they needed someone who understood the law and Gabriel was central to that. Whatever the dictionary definition, any action against Mugabe will rely on the strength of the military. Fortunately, the head of the Zimbabwean Armed Forces, General Constantine Chiwenga, is already on side.

An old friend of Emerson Mnangagwa, Chiwenga is in China on government business when the crocodile is sacked as vice president. And there is no way that that was not intentional. Mugabe would not have fired Mnangagwa unless Chiwenga was out the country because Chawenga was obviously the most powerful man in the country, really. He ran the military, right? And they did plan to arrest him when he flew back. But Chawenga hasn't made general without knowing how to spot a trap. A burly man in his early 60s, he's a veteran of the liberation war. And he's more than

prepared for whatever Mugabe's goons have in store for him. On Sunday November 12th, less than a week after Menengagwa arrives in South Africa, Chiwenga boards an Emirates flight bound for Harare. That afternoon, Mugabe's loyal police chief, Augustine Chihuri, sends a dozen cars to the airport. His men are under orders to arrest the general as soon as he gets off the plane, but Chiwenga is way ahead of them. An 18-man special forces team loyal to him, not Mugabe, has already infiltrated the airport, disguised as baggage handlers.

Their guns are concealed under their overalls. As Chuenga's plane begins taxiing towards the terminal, his undercover team make their move. Simultaneously, all 18 men draw their weapons. Each one is aimed at the head of a police officer. Meanwhile, out in the parking lot, a second team clamps the wheels of every police car in sight. In a matter of moments, Mugabe's forces have been stood down without a single shot being fired. Chuenga's men escort him off the plane to a convoy of vehicles waiting on the runway.

They storm straight through a police roadblock outside the airport, heading for the army barracks in Harare. The following afternoon, Chiwenga gives a press conference. He says that the army stands ready to save ZANU-PF from those whose agenda is to destroy it from within. Meaning people like Grace Mugabe and her friends in G40. He's laying down the law to Mugabe saying you don't come after the war veterans and you don't hand over a revolution to usurpers like your wife Grace.

And when that happened, you just knew that things were going to go down because you're not the head of the armed forces of zimbabwe making idle threats robert mcgarvey though seems blissfully unfazed the next day at his weekly cabinet meeting the general statement doesn't even come up it's not not until later on Tuesday that things start to get real. The business at the airport was just a taster for what is to come. One of the slickest military operations in Zimbabwean history. Its codename is Operation Restore Legacy. It started on an overcast, drizzly afternoon.

People started noticing there were tanks in the streets, soldiers moving into position. It's important to understand that the police at this time were allied with Mugabe and Grace. The military were allied with Munagawa and Chawenga. So what they did is they basically shut down the police, closed off their barracks, shut down the armories. basically shut down the police, closed off their barracks, shut down the armories. And then over the course of the next few hours, they then took over the national broadcaster. So now it's sort of, it's nighttime, rain is starting to fall, there's lightning starting, right? Perfect sort of mythology for Zimbabwe

that this happened on this night of thunder and lightning in Harare. As soldiers storm the studios of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, journalists cower in terror under their desks. But Chiwenga's men reassure them they're in no danger. They're being advised by Gabriel Schumbe in Johannesburg, and he's given them the strictest instructions.

When they struck that evening, he was literally on phone calls as it was going down, telling them don't beat journalists, don't shoot civilians, don't do any of this. If you do that, your coup is a coup, and it's not going to be accepted

by the world. By midnight, that your coup is a coup and it's not going to be accepted by the world by midnight chiwanga's tanks and armored personnel carriers have arrived in borodale the exclusive gated community where mcgarvey and his cronies all live for now though it's the homes of the g40 inner circle that the army are interested in. Finance Minister Ignatius Chombo, political commissar Xavier Casacagüere, and the group's enigmatic puppet master, Jonathan Moyo. One of the most surreal aspects of the coup that was not a coup was that it took place in the suburbs.

It took place in this wealthy neighborhood. It was a bit like if special forces, if the SAS in Britain had staged a coup and taken out the leaders in Hampshire and in Mayfair, or like American soldiers had raided kind of the mansions in Chevy Chase and Beverly Hills. That's how this operation went down. It took place in the wealthiest square mile of the country and one of the wealthiest square miles of the entire continent. At 2.30am, three raids are launched simultaneously. Outside Chumbo's residence, the front gates are blown off their hinges.

Two private security guards are shot dead as troops storm the building. Outside Chumbo's residence, the front gates are blown off their hinges. Two private security guards are shot dead as troops storm the building. They find the finance minister trembling in a bedroom, along with his wife and their maid. Meanwhile at Moyo's house, soldiers go from room to room, trashing the lavish mansion. But he is nowhere to be seen. Fearing just such an assault, Moyo has taken his wife and kids to the even grander abode of his neighbour, Savia Kasakuweri. The two men are in the study trying to get some sleep when an explosion rips apart the

steel front gates. The soldiers scale the property's imposing walls, dropping gunfire and grenades down on Kasakuari's private security. But the house's reinforced walls and bulletproof glass buy the inhabitants some time. Frantically they place a call to Grace Mugabe, begging her to intervene. Exactly what happens next remains shrouded in mystery, but within 15 minutes, the assault is called off. A government car pulls up outside the mansion.

Moyo and Kasakuari scramble inside. Soon, they're making a dash for the Mozambique border, the latest Zimbabweans heading for a life in exile. Meanwhile, tanks have taken up positions around Mugabe and Grace's home, the Blue Roof. They maintain a respectful distance, but the message is clear. The President is under effective house arrest. At 4am, a Major General in Ibere and Army fatigues appears on state TV. We wish to assure the nation that His Excellency the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe,

Comrade Araji Mugabe and his family are safe and sound and their security is guaranteed. We wish to make it abundantly clear that this is not a military takeover of government. With his house cordoned off by tanks, Mugabe would seem to be out of options. But getting him to relinquish power is easier said than done. Still, no one is using the C word. When the coup happened, because I'm going to call it a coup, not allowed to be called a coup inside Zimbabwe. When the coup happened, the political theatre of persuading Robert Mugabe that he needed to step down continued for nearly a week.

They kept pushing and pushing and pushing to get him to resign because they didn't want him to be removed by the military. They wanted him to go on his own accord so that it would not be seen as a coup. They could have gone in there and saying, we're arresting you, putting you in jail. Your wife is going to stand trial for her crimes and theft, whatever. That could have resulted in a civil war in Zimbabwe. Instead, they pretended that Mugabe was still in power. And the next week was this sort of this shadowy game

where one impression is being given, but something else is happening behind the scenes and really it's like politics as like high art things are still on a knife edge because it could go either way and bear in mind if it failed here's the other thing they are in big trouble you could be executed for treason right so if it didn't, they're dead or in jail for the rest of their lives. When Mugabe stalls, the Northgate group go into overdrive. From the Holiday Inn and Johannesburg Airport, they launch the SPIN campaign to end all SPIN campaigns. Meanwhile, sympathetic ZANU-PF stalwarts sweet-talk friends in foreign governments.

Around the globe, political leaders agree to wait and see what happens. But with Mugabe refusing to budge, the Northgate group realise they'll need another big push to gain the legitimacy they require. And it will have to be organised in record time. One of the big things that group did was organise in the space of 48 hours the biggest march that had ever taken place in Harare. A march to get Mugabe to step down, where approximately close to a million people sort of hit the streets of the country.

For lawyer Gabriel Schumba, it's time to come in from the cold. With Kasper's help, he smuggled across the border in the boot of a car, the same method that he used to flee the country 14 years earlier. Back in his homeland, Gabriel is hit by a mix of emotions. You know, you look at beautiful Zimbabwe, I think there are very few countries that are as beautiful as that country. It was just something very overwhelming. Just to see that the destruction that had taken place would take many years to repair.

You know, there was a moment when I also knelt down just after we crossed the border. I started crying. I also kissedelt down just after we crossed the border. I started crying. I also kissed the ground. And it was something that was just automatic. It just felt so much of a relief that I was back inside the country of my birth. Douglas Rogers, too, finds himself back in Zimbabwe for the big day. I'd been on a trip in Mozambique researching a book. I returned to attend that march.

It was a euphoric time, quite an extraordinary thing to witness soldiers of the Zimbabwe National Army respectfully allowing people to protest and to march and to demand that Mugabe step down. Another very clever thing that the organizers of the coup did, apart from not stringing up Mugabe and his wife, they also allowed international media in to cover the march. So journalists who'd been banned, news organizations like the BBC, were suddenly overnight allowed into the country to cover this march.

And it was quite a remarkable event. I remember thinking, there's no way Mugabe stays after this. You know, the euphoria was even more than 1980, I guess. You can't explain it, but everybody was there. Of course, there were those that were close to him who felt at Danbar, who felt that it was an illegal regime

change and all that. And of course, they have the right to think what they think, but I think during that time, it's indisputable that the majority felt otherwise. You know, the excitement was just indescribable. But amidst the jubilation, there's room for cynicism too.

The march, after all, is no spontaneous gathering. It's been organized for a specific political purpose. And despite the broad base of Zimbabweans taking to the streets, that purpose is fairly limited. The replacement of one ZANU-PF veteran, Robert Mugabe, with another, Emerson Munangagwa. You know, the guy who took over Munangagwa, he was sort of head of the Gokurhundi in the 80s,

and they'd all been just plundering the country. So they all knew where the bodies were buried. They were all as guilty as hell. My father had a great line where he said, I can't believe I'm cheering on Mnangagwa. It's like cheering on a snake eating another snake. But that's how a lot of people felt. Like, what do you choose?

The lesser of two evils. For now, though though the more poisonous snake is still refusing to budge from his nest at 93 years old robert mugabe is determined to cling on to power he even tries to bribe general chiwenga to back down offering to make him his successor. But the general knows better than to trust any promise coming from Mugabe. As the secret negotiations continue, Zimbabwe holds its breath. For some, the stakes are terrifyingly high. Gabriel Shumba has returned to the country to celebrate the end of a dictatorship. Now it seems that dictator might be sticking around after all.

Kasper meanwhile has blown his cover as a double agent, exposing himself to retribution from his colleagues in the intelligence service. Finally, on Sunday evening, the day after the march, Mugabe appears on state television, flanked by General Chewenga and his men. Around the world, almost a billion pairs of eyes are glued to their TV screens. Pundits are confident about what will happen next. Reliable sources within the negotiating team have told them the moment is finally here. After 37 years in power, Mugabe is about to resign. But as the president prepares

to speak, the sheaf of papers he's carrying falls to the floor. He goes on to deliver a speech very different to the one everyone's expecting. There was a very rambling, incoherent speech. Everyone expected him to be contrite. But in fact, about 15 minutes in, he starts talking about the economy and it becomes this boring State of the Union address. And he acknowledges nothing, basically, about what's been happening. And I remember turning to a friend of mine who I was watching it with in this room, and we both looked at each other and said, he's not resigning. And it was that, again, like fear, terror. Oh my God, like this is going to go horribly wrong.

A joke begins doing the rounds on social media. How do you put a champagne cork back in the bottle? Ask eight million Zimbabweans less than 24 hours later Douglas Rogers is on a plane out of the country I'm making no secrets I'm not a war reporter or conflict reporter and that stuff terrifies me that a wife and young children this thing is not going to go down the way we've thought it is and things are going to get very The high stakes poker game between Mugabe and Chiuenga could hardly be more tense. If the general is unwilling to force the president out of office, then it's up to Mugabe to fold. His political future is clearly untenable,

and yet, for some reason, he just won't go. Experts try to divine what's going on in the old man's head. I think to a large extent, Mugabe became trapped by power. He made the statement that only God would remove him. I do think he became trapped with his own sense of indispensability because he surrounded himself with psychophants, but he also felt he was surrounded by lesser people and he couldn't hand over, he couldn't hand the revolution safely onto these people. He had many university degrees, many of which were gained in prison.

So he valued that kind of validation, that kind of credentialization. The presidency was one more great credentialization that he didn't want to let go of. I think we think dictators are so complex. They're not. People just love power. They love the benefits that come with it. They love everything about it. Whatever the cause of the political psychodrama clearly it's time for plan B Fortunately the Northgate group have one more card to play and it's in the hands of Monica Muchanga

a ZANU-PF Member of Parliament Her husband, Christopher Muchanga is by now the public face of the Northgate group On Tuesday morning Her husband, Christopher Muchanga, is by now the public face of the Northgate group. On Tuesday morning, Mrs Muchanga tables a motion of impeachment against Mugabe. 37 years ago, he came to power through parliamentary democracy, and if needs be, he'll be taken down the same way. In Zimbabwe, though, politics is a dangerous business.

Monica Machangwa is the one who tables the motion. And basically it says that Mugabe is too old, he's lost the faith and the trust in the nation and he must step down. And as she does this, she is approached by a man named Hapitin Bonyong We, who is at that point the head of the Central Intelligence Organization. And he basically says, you're a dead woman if you go through with this. But Monica Machanga isn't easily intimidated. From the age of 15, she was a fighter in the Liberation War. And five decades on, that grit remains. She says, I went to war, you don't scare me. She isn't the only one whose life is on the line.

Gabriel and Kasper have come to watch the impeachment proceedings in person. And they know that if Mugabe pulls another rabbit out of the hat, they are done for as well. The future of Zimbabwe rests on a knife edge. But then, just as the impeachment motion is about to be debated, something extraordinary happens. All eyes are on the Speaker of the House as he's handed a piece of paper by Hapiton Bonyongwe, the same Mugabe loyalist who just threatened Muchanga's life.

It's a letter from Robert Mugabe. I, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, hereby formally tender my resignation as the President of the Republic of Mugabe with immediate effect. The speaker reads it out and Mugabe has finally stepped down. I assume to avoid the humiliation of being impeached. At long last, the time has finally come to pop the champagne. The celebrations begin in Parliament. Even the G40 MPs are soon on their feet, along with the rest of the House. After decades of dictatorship under Mugabe, it's a moment that tastes like freedom.

But for the Northgate plotters, who helped bring about this extraordinary turn of events, the story still isn't over. Gabriel Schoenberg spends the rest of the day with Caspar and a couple of his intelligence colleagues, toasting the success of their operation. The following morning, more than a little worse for wear, the three men set off on a celebratory road trip. But what they don't know is they're being followed. Gabriel was on a hit list because of his activism decades before.

They're being followed by intelligence operatives who know that these are the guys who have been part of this whole operation in Johannesburg and they end up getting stopped on a road the following day in a suburb south of Harare. Gabriel escapes. Kasper is arrested and tortured for several days and they want to find out who else is involved, whether they can track him down. And it actually takes the return of Munagagwa a day or two later

before he's finally released. turn of Mnangagwa a day or two later before he's finally released. On November 24th 2017, less than three weeks after his frantic scramble across the Mozambique border, the crocodile, Emerson Mnangagwa, becomes Zimbabwe's second post-independence leader. In his inaugural address, he has nothing but kind words for his predecessor. Robert Mugabe, he says, is the only surviving founding father of our nation. Seemingly forgetting the death threats he received less than a month ago, Meningagua declares, To me, me personally he remains a father mentor

comrade in arms and my leader he concludes with no apparent sense of irony I trust that history will grant him his proper place certainly Mugabe's generous severance package

reflects his status as Zimbabwe's most valued public servant. He's granted a $10 million pension. He and Grace are free to enjoy their political retirement in their 25-bed mansion, which is technically still the property of ZANU-PF. Off the record, they've also been given lifetime immunity from prosecution. The former president's birthday, February the 21st, even becomes a national holiday.

Despite the unorthodox way he came to power, Meningagua paints himself as an agent of continuity rather than change. After all, ZANU-PF remain in charge. After four decades, no other party, officially at least, has managed to supplant them. But it's a mixed legacy, to say the least. Journalist Nathan Dodso. When 1980 came, Zimbabwe was seen as the breadbasket of Southern Africa.

To go from a breadbasket to now a dependent on those countries surrounding you is a big shift. How do you live with that? You know, it's sad. It's sad. I've seen enormous deprivation here. People die from treatable diseases every day. The education system is shocking. There's an estimate of 80 to 90 percent unemployment. I don't think that's a legacy to be proud of at all. So over the years, they've really eroded the things that kept the country anchored. And in a very sad turn of events, that sort of destruction is what keeps dictators thriving. Dictators thrive in states that are in disarray, that have a lot of disorder. It works for them.

Robert Mugabe, the teacher turned revolutionary turned dictator, lives out the rest of his life in luxury. But he's not long for this earth. In September 2019, less than two years after leaving office, he dies at a hospital in Singapore. There's some disagreement about what to do with the former president's body. President Mnangagwa wants to bury him in Hero's Acre, where luminaries of the liberation war are traditionally interred. But Grace Mugabe has other plans for her late husband. She has determined that he should be buried in Kutama, the tiny village where, almost

a century earlier, he and his brother Michael grew up under the watchful eyes of their grandparents and the local Catholic priests. This time, the former First Lady gets her way, and the crocodile backs down. Within Zimbabwe, Mugabe's legacy is a complicated one. A tyrant, despised as much as he was feared, he was also the man who liberated the country from the brutal white regime of Ian Smith. If he had left office a few decades earlier, his reputation might have been very different.

He did well in certain aspects, especially education and health, during the first years of his rule. But he then introduced some of the very things that he was blaming Smith's government of doing. And unfortunately, the world wanted so much to believe him that when we were crying out, trying to be heard, nobody believed us. And we were left to fight our own war.

That's all they knew in terms of liberation. He is all they knew. He is all they had. He was their savior. But that savior did not come bearing gifts that led them to the promised land. It was a totally different gift. Just have to look and see where the country is heading

and just pray that one day the people of Zimbabwe will actually be in a position to celebrate the independence that they're supposed to have been enjoying for the past 42 years. One day. Real Dictators will be back soon. Stay tuned. Thank you.