Pre-Mugabe Zimbabwe was known as "the breadbasket of Africa" for the productivity of its farms. Mugabe brought economic collapse and famine, while living a life of luxury and stashing billions overseas. Hopefully whoever comes next will be a better leader.
background:
President is old and have succession problems. In recent years his wife trying to grab more and more power to be the next president but not everyone in the ruling party like that. last week she (from the mouth of the president) fired "number 2" in the country. since then everyone who was "friend" with number 2 was fired too. when they tried to get rid of the army general (friend of number 2) he refused to leave his office in claim that president wife doing undemocratic things. yesterday he did the "takeover". its not yet clear if the president will switched with the number 2 guy (the friend of the general).
It's good to remember that he is in power since 1980.
Calling a dictator as a President doesn't make him one.
And this doesn't make the takeover good or bad, btw.
"While denying that the military had seized power, they said that Mr. Mugabe and his family “are safe and sound, and their security is guaranteed.”<p>“We are only targeting criminals <i>around him</i> who are committing crimes that are causing social and economic suffering in the country in order to bring them to justice,"<p>This doesn't look good.
I wish our neighbors well! its been a long time over due.I really hope it will be a peaceful transition, as SA has their own problems they need to deal with(cANCer)! We cannot have a refugee crisis and a civil war on our borders
These African countries always remind me of Darwin's Nightmare[0]. There is an interview with Raphael at 1:20:41 in which he says he wants a war because he can earn more money then.<p>[0]<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcnTWAyzhbg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcnTWAyzhbg</a>
A new strong man will appear. He will talk about a fresh start, a new aera, the press will celebrate him, his followers will demand part of the loot- transparency iternational celebrates his existance, the cycle goes on and on.
There have been several coups or other undemocratic assumptions of power recently: Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, China (Xi seems to have made himself dictator-for-life), Turkey, and to a degree in Japan, in at least one Eastern European country, and even in France (which AFAIK now has an indefinite state of emergency curtailing rights of citizens).<p>I wonder how much and in what way they are related to the U.S. changing its long-standing policy from being the guarantor of international order, and from being an advocate for democracy as a universal right. Some examples in my list started before the current US policy went into effect, but perhaps the US is accelerating a trend, merely responding to it, or even taking an active hand (during the Cold War the US played an active role in such things, from Congo/Zaire to Chile to Iran to Indonesia to many other places). Perhaps others are taking active hands now that the US is out of the picture (to a significant degree) as guarantor.<p>That trend, away from democracy, is very serious and is the headline here for me. Generations fought, struggled and died to establish the legacy of democracy and human rights that we inherited; what are we building for the next generation? It feels like we are just gambling away the family inheritance.