Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe arrived at a university graduation ceremony in the capital on Friday, his first public appearance since a military seizure of power that political sources say is aimed at ending his 37 years in office.

Wearing a blue and yellow academic gown and mortar board hat, the 93-year-old sat in large wooden chair at the front the hall. He was greeted by ululations from the crowd as he declared the ceremony open.

Earlier Friday, Zimbabwe’s military claimed that it was making “significant progress” in talks with Mugabe for his departure from power while it pursues and arrests allies of the president and his wife.

Talks with Mugabe continued, the military said in a statement reported by the state-run Herald newspaper and Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.

Zimbabwe’s military is “currently engaging with the Commander-in-Chief President Robert Mugabe on the way forward and will advise the nation of the outcome as soon as possible,” the statement said.

“Significant progress has been made in their operation to weed out criminals around President Mugabe,” it said, adding that the military had already arrested some although others remained at large. Those sought had been “committing crimes that were causing social and economic suffering in Zimbabwe.”

The military is seeking cabinet ministers and other top officials who had been associates of first lady, Grace Mugabe, part of a clique dubbed the G40 because many were in their 40s and 50s. They are of a different generation from the one that fought for independence from white minority rule.

Army troops and armored vehicles continued to patrol the capital, Harare, as Zimbabweans went about their daily business.

Ousted VP back in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe’s former vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, whose sacking last week triggered the military’s takeover, has returned to the country, an aide told AFP Friday.

Mnangagwa, who is a leading candidate to succeed President Mugabe, flew back to Harare on Thursday after nearly a week abroad, as army chiefs and the president met to negotiate Mugabe’s exit from office.

The generals took over late on Tuesday after Mnangagwa was sacked by the president and Mugabe’s wife emerged in prime position to succeed her increasingly frail husband.

Government TV showed Mugabe, the world’s oldest head of state, dressed in a navy blue blazer and grey trousers standing alongside army chief General Constantino Chiwenga.

(Source: Agencies)

Three people were shot dead Friday in Nairobi, an AFP reporter saw, as police dispersed thousands of opposition supporters welcoming home their leader Raila Odinga from an overseas trip.

The three men, all with bullet wounds in the upper body, were seen lying on the road in Muthurwa, a city suburb where riot police armed with tear gas, water cannons and rifles clashed with stone throwing protesters, part of angry battles that lasted throughout the day.

Odinga won an unprecedented court victory overturning the result of the August 8 presidential poll, leading to a rerun last month that he then boycotted claiming it would not be free and fair.

Kenya’s Supreme Court is due to rule Monday on whether President Uhuru Kenyatta can be sworn in for a second term or if there must be another rerun.

The dispute over this year’s presidential vote has left the country deeply divided and protests between opposition supporters and police have become commonplace.

Human rights groups estimate that close to 50 people have been killed in election-related violence, the vast majority shot by police.

Odinga returned Friday from a 10-day trip to the United States where he visited think tanks and sought support for his contention that fresh elections must be held, supervised by an overhauled election board.

His National Super Alliance (NASA) coalition had called its supporters to a “Welcome Back Baba Convoy” — using a nickname for Odinga — to join the opposition leader on his way from the airport to a planned rally in the city center.

But a heavy deployment of police blocked roads and broke up crowds surrounding the convoy, unleashing liberal amounts of tear gas, copious jets from water cannon trucks and firing shots.

The clashes caused chaos in the capital that continued late into the afternoon.

Following the rerun vote, NASA launched a “National Resistance Movement” aiming to use civil disobedience and boycotts to challenge what it considers to be Kenyatta’s illegal government.

Friday’s gathering of thousands of opposition supporters in Nairobi was the movement’s first show of strength since then, but fell short of the “million man march” promised by party leaders.

It also marked a heavier deployment of police than in the past, as they sought to block Odinga from holding a rally.

Eventually, Odinga managed to say a few words to cheering supporters from the sunroof of his car.

“Today is the day we are launching Kenya as a third republic,” he said, referring to independence from Britain in 1963 and the new constitution in 2010.

“What you have seen is a signal that a third liberation is coming soon,” Odinga said before driving away.

(Source: AFP)

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has refused to cede power to the military which has seized power in the southern African country and put him under house arrest.

Generals met with Mugabe on Thursday in the capital, Harare, and made efforts to push the 93-year-old veteran to resign, sources confirmed to the AFP news agency.

Mugabe’s motorcade reportedly took the president from his home to State House to hold a meeting with the generals.

The president also held meetings with envoys from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional bloc.

Images of the meeting showed Mugabe dressed in a navy blue blazer and grey trousers standing alongside army chief General Constantino Chiwenga who smiled and was dressed in camouflage military fatigues.

Military forces took control of Harare on Wednesday, with soldiers and armored vehicles blocking roads to the main government offices, the parliament, and the courts in central Harare.

Mugabe has been in power for almost four decades, since the former British colony gained independence from the UK in 1980.

To many Zimbabweans, he is a “war hero” and an “African icon” who played a definitive role in making the country independent.

However, his deteriorating health in recent years has triggered a succession war between his wife Grace and Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa.

The military generals are strongly opposed to Grace’s presidency, while Mnangagwa has maintained cordial ties with the military.

On Thursday, the African Union expressed concern, calling on Zimbabwe’s military to halt what “seems like a coup”.

AU chief, Guinea’s President Alpha Conde, warned that the continent “will never accept the military coup d’etat” in Zimbabwe and called for a return to the “constitutional order.”

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres also called for “calm and non-violence” and for the fundamental rights of Zimbabwean citizens to be preserved, a spokesman for the UN chief said.

In Harare, residents continued life as normal on Thursday, commuting, socializing and working as they ignored the few soldiers still on the streets.

The state-owned Herald newspaper in its editorial took a neutral stand by remaining loyal to Mugabe but also endorsing the military’s action.

Source: Presstv

La Republique du Cameroun is heading towards a major political crisis in parliament. The 18 MPs and 14 senators of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), have issued a statement in which they denounced in 8 points, the socio-political situation in Southern Cameroons.

The SDF parliamentary groups in the Senate and the National Assembly slammed among other things, excessive human rights abuses, mass killings, jailing of Southern Cameroonians in French Cameroun detention centres and the plight of Southern Cameroons refugess in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The predominantly Anglophone parliamentarians say Southern Cameroonians are considered by the Biya Francophone government to be “terrorists” and the regime is killing them in their numbers. The SDF elected representatives have also pointed out that instead of an inclusive, frank and sincere dialogue, the Yaounde government has been applying the use of force to a purely political problem.

Consequently, the SDF has suspended its participation in the current session, the 4th of its kind since the outbreak of the Southern Cameroons crisis in November 2016. A member of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate who spoke to our Yaounde city reporter immediately after the SDF decision was made public condemned the SDF MPs for receiving their bonus before launching their strike action.

By Rita Akana in Yaounde

Zimbabwe’s opposition leader and former prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai has returned to the African country to following an effective coup against long-time President Robert Mugabe.

A spokesman for Tsvangirai, who is the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said he had flown back home from South Africa late on Wednesday, adding that two other former government ministers had also returned to their country from Russia.

The privately-owned NewsDay Zimbabwe paper reported that Tsvangirai was “ready to enter negotiations to form a transitional government with former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa.”

Political tensions emerged in Zimbabwe last week after Mugabe fired Mnangagwa and accused him of plotting to take power, including through witchcraft. Mnangagwa, who enjoyed the backing of the military, had previously been considered the most likely to succeed the president if Mugabe resigned or died while in power. His sudden dismissal, however, raised speculations that Mugabe was clearing the way for his wife, Grace, to take the position.

 

The Thursday announcement came a day after the army seized power in the country in what was described by the leader of the African Union as a “coup.”

Military forces blocked roads to the main government buildings in the center of the capital, Harare, and sought to portray it as a “bloodless transition” away from Mugabe.

Meanwhile, Reuters cites a “source” said that Mugabe and his wife and two key figures from her G40 political faction are under house arrest at Mugabe’s “Blue House” compound in Harare.

The army has also detained Finance Minister Ignatius Chombo, a leading member of the G40, which is a faction of the ruling ZANU-PF party, run by the president’s wife.

ZANU-PF said in series of tweets on Wednesday that “E Mnagngawa will be president of ZANU PF as per the constitution of our revolutionary organization.”

 

Mugabe and his wife have been on the European Union (EU)’s sanctions list along with other key figures in Zimbabwe’s ruling elite, facing travel bans and asset freezes abroad.

The Zimbabwean president has called the sanctions, by the EU and separately by the United States over rights issues “wrong,” blaming them for his government’s failure to pay its workers on time, which led to a crippling strike last year.

Source: Presstv