Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU PF party has reacted angrily to remarks by former Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo that the southern African country set a bad precedence for the latest wave of military takeovers across Africa.
Addressing the Pan African Parliament in South Africa last week, Obasanjo blamed Zimbabwe for allegedly setting a wrong precedent of coups in Africa after the ouster of late president Robert Mugabe in November 2017 was sanitised and packaged as a bona fide means of replacing unpopular regimes outside the ballot.
“It started in Zimbabwe where they said ‘it’s not a coup and it’s a half coup, it’s near a coup’; A coup is a coup!” Obasanjo is quoted as telling parliamentarians.
The remarks drew an angry response from ZANU PF whose spokesperson Chris Mutsvangwa who said the former Nigerian leader, 84, “is in ‘sour grapes’ mode after his clandestine attempt to play kingmaker in Zimbabwe in 2017 failed dismally.”
“His attempts to install (name withheld) as leader of Zimbabwe in 2017 came to nought after all the people of Zimbabwe turned en masse to the streets in a show of massive support for their Zimbabwe Defence Forces,” Mutsvangwa said.
He said Obasanjo had no moral ground to lecture Zimbabwe on military takeovers, himself owing “his political prominence to a military coup he executed in 1976.”
“To take a cue from current obnoxious remarks on Zimbabwe that aim to besmirch, a one-time coup leader remains a coup leader for all his life, no matter the political “dry cleaning” the coup leader may assiduously pre-occupy himself with in subsequent years,” Mutsvangwa said.
He added: “Yes, Olusegun Obasanjo may have done some good work on the Ethiopia-Tigray ceasefire, but it is churlish of him to ride on this and spin an anti-Zimbabwe yarn in his self-centred triumphalist chest-pumping.”
JN/APA