The party of Robert Mugabe will rule Zimbabwe “until donkeys grow horns”, the country’s army commander has pledged.
Lieutenant General Anselem Sanyatwe said the army would march citizens to polling stations and make them vote for the party that has governed the southern African nation since it gained independence 44 years ago.
“Zanu (PF) shall rule until donkeys grow horns, whatever your stated and expressed wishes. I am now speaking as the commander of the army. We shall use what is called command voting,” he is reported as saying over the weekend at a gathering of constituents in an area where his wife is the MP.
“Do we understand each other? Forward with Zanu (PF) … Forward with Mnangagwa. Down with the enemy,” he said, referring to President Mnangagwa, nicknamed “the Crocodile”, who assumed power after Mugabe was unseated in a military coup in 2017. Mugabe died in 2019.
His comments have drawn ire from some quarters, with a top Zimbabwean lawyer, Thabani Mpofu, threatening to pursue legal action against Sanyatwe if he did not withdraw the “unconstitutional” remarks. “The nation deserves a military that safeguards democracy, not one that undermines it,” Mpofu posted on Twitter/X.
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Hopewell Chin’ono, a Zimbabwean journalist, also criticised the army chief. “It is not every day you hear an army general publicly pledging to use military force to keep a ruling party in power! However, the chilling statement by General Sanyatwe is not new in Zimbabwe, the army has always been used as a wing of the corrupt Zanu (PF) party.” Chin’ono posted on Twitter/X.
During the first post-Mugabe elections in 2018 Sanyatwe ordered soldiers to fire on opposition protesters, killing six, and earning himself a place on the US sanctions list.
Zanu (PF) won elections again last year. The opposition rejected the results and foreign poll monitors said the election had failed to meet international standards.
Sanyatwe’s comments resemble a pledge once made by former the South African president Jacob Zuma, who said that the African National Congress Party (ANC) would “rule until Jesus comes back.”
After the ANC lost its majority at elections in May, a joke was doing the rounds in South African that the Messiah must have returned.
