Zimbabwe’s war veterans, who have played a crucial and sometimes violent role in supporting President Robert Mugabe, on Thursday denounced him as “dictatorial” in the latest sign of growing national instability.
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Last week hundreds of Mawarire supporters rallied outside a court in the capital, Harare, until the pastor was released when a case against him of attempting to overthrow the government was dismissed.
Mawarire has used #ThisFlag on social media to call for peaceful protests against the government, and has drawn the wrath of Mugabe, who accused Mawarire of being funded by foreign countries and of not being a “true preacher of the Bible”. “They spell in reverse (DOG)”, he railed during the burial of former permanent secretary Charles Utete at the Heroes Acre on Tuesday.
This was in stark difference to the recent demonstrations against the worsening economic problems blamed on Mugabe’s government. In May, Mawarire urged people to carry the national flag with them everywhere they went for a week.
“I am a very anxious man after hearing what our head of state said about me this week”, he said.
Speaking at a funeral earlier this week, Mugabe warned the people to “beware these men of the cloth”, alluding to the opposition preacher.
War Veterans have rebelled against President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF saying he should step down.
They further said Zimbabweans had lost confidence in Mugabe’s rule.
“The demographic and racial character of the swelling crowd of Zimbabweans showing solidarity with Pastor Evan Mawarire of #ThisFlag at the Harare Magistrates’s Courts is humbling and gives a sense that something could happen in Zimbabwe”, Pedzisai Ruhanya of the Zimbabwe Democracy Institute, a local think tank, told the Daily News.
The announcement “delegitimizes Mugabe in a big way, not least because he is always quick to flaunt his war credentials and revels in his title as patron of the war veterans association”, said political analyst Gabriel Shumba, chairman of the South Africa-based Zimbabwe Exiles Forum. “I know that it is a reality that I am living with”.
The veterans, who have campaigned, often violently, for the veteran leader during presidential elections since 2000, said they were withdrawing their political support, a statement that exposed rifts in the heart of Zimbabwe’s establishment. His government, facing severe currency shortages, has restricted cash withdrawals, banned imports of many goods and repeatedly delayed payment of civil servants’ salaries, leading to strikes.
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“Regrettably, the general citizenry has previously been subjected to this inhuman and degrading treatment without a word of disapproval from us”, the veterans’ statement said of the incident.
