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Notes
1. Their association is long: first, as Rhodesian political prisoners in Salisbury Prison; then as his special assistant once Mugabe became president of the anti-colonial liberation movement, the Zimbabwean African National Union (ZANU), in Mozambique in 1977; and then as a minister in various portfolios since 1980.
2. The ZNLWVA is an organization that, like veterans of the anti-colonial guerrilla armies themselves (Kriger Citation2003), has both criticized and been allied with President Mugabe over the last 25 years.
3. There is only one publicly confirmed death due to the coup as soldiers killed a security guard who resisted their entrance at the house of the then-Finance Minister, Ignatius Chombo (who is now facing various charges of corruption). Also, several senior officials loyal to Mugabe were severely beaten (Gagare Citation2017). But compared to the violence associated with the conduct of electoral politics in Zimbabwe, it was noticeably peaceful. As one meme circulating on social media put it: “Our coup is more peaceful than elections; we should change our constitution to have coups every five years instead.”
4. My friend Rinse Nyamuda used this apt phrasing in a private communication with me.
5. Dan Hodgkinson (Citation2013) nicely shows how a similar conflation of violence and masculinity permeated many of the university student activists who protested ZANU–PF’s rule in the 1990s and 2000s.
6. It became the largest diamond-producing deposit in the world.
7. “The key strategist for the Zimbabwean branch of the elite network is the Speaker of the Parliament and former National Security Minister, Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa. Mr Mnangagwa has won strong support from senior military and intelligence officers for an aggressive policy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo” (Section 27, United Nations Citation2002). It also names Air Marshal Perence Shiri and Brigadier General Sibusiso Busi Moyo as involved in the plundering; President Mnangagwa named Shiri as his Minister of Agriculture and Moyo as his Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in his first cabinet.