Spokesman: Robert Mugabe Spent Saturday Protests Snacking, ‘Upbeat and Chatty’

A spokesman for Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s embattled dictator, told a local newspaper that he spent his Saturday “upbeat and chatting” and enjoying corn snacks while thousands of Zimbabweans took to the streets of the capital, Harare, to call for his ouster.

The nation’s military, which is working to remove Mugabe, allowed the protest, and some even celebrated on the streets with protesters. Any criticism of Mugabe between 1980, when he took the reins of the new nation, and last Saturday was met with swift and violent law enforcement action.

Despite the public act of rejection, which received widespread international coverage this weekend, spokesman George Charamba told the New Zimbabwe newspaper that Mugabe, 93, spent the day waxing nostalgic about his youth and eating corn snacks.

“He was talking about his school days in the 1930s and anthropology and how it impacted on the colonial perception of Africans and their intellect,” Charamba claimed. “In the midst of such a highly charged intellectual conversation, we were munching maize. Oh my God, he was very upbeat and chatty.”

Charamba also argued to the newspaper that the military officials demanding Mugabe step down were “not challenging the president’s role,” a statement as difficult to reconcile with reality as the military’s insistence that their intervention to depose Mugabe is “not a military takeover.”

Military leaders announced last week that they had intervened in the government to prevent “criminals” from controlling the government, alleging that their action was in the best interests of Mugabe himself. Reports asserted that Mugabe was under house arrest and that the whereabouts of both his wife, Grace, whom the military opposed as his successor and their approved candidate, former Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, were unknown.

Following the protest on Saturday, the military announced that Mugabe would deliver a speech in which he was expected to step down. Instead, Mugabe asserted that he had listened to the “concerns” of the military and would address them as head of state.

“Whatever the pros and cons of the way they went about registering those concerns, I, as the president of Zimbabwe and as their commander in chief, do acknowledge the issues they are drawing my attention to … raised in the spirit of honesty and out of deep and patriotic concern,” Mugabe asserted.

While he acknowledged “a few incidents may have occurred here and there” to displace the military, including the economic collapse of the nation and the appointment of his wife as second-in-command, “these have been corrected,” he said.

“The [ruling Zanu-PF] party congress is due in a few weeks and I will preside over its processes,” Mugabe concluded, in a speech given after Zanu-PF had ousted him from leadership.

Shocked military leaders told journalists that Mugabe had shown them a speech in which he would resign but apparently replaced the text of that speech with the one he actually delivered at the last minute. The leader of the military action, Chris Mutsvangwa, told reporters at a press conference on Monday that he was “disappointed” in Mugabe.

Observers around Zimbabwe expressed outrage at the speech. “I’m so angry. I thought we were gonna be here tonight celebrating. But instead, he said nothing,” one man told South Africa’s News24.

“We were all optimistic, that he’ll resign. But that’s all nonsense,” another man, which News24 identifies as Tawanda, told the outlet. “To be honest I didn’t expect him to resign. I was hoping he would, but I didn’t expect it would happen.”

Zanu-PF gave Mugabe a deadline of noon Monday to resign, which came and went, with nothing from the head of state. The Party has thus begun to prepare impeachment proceedings to remove him.