By Dr Sara Rich Dorman, Politics & International Relations, SPS University of Edinburgh

Zimbabwe’s leadership transition is both over-determined and unexpected. An increasingly fragile economy that seemed headed back into hyper-inflation and crisis, made some sort of intervention even more likely. Few observers thought it would come via tanks on the street, but everyone knew the military was calling the shots. But this is a story about a political party, not about the military.

What we are seeing is a fight for the control of Zimbabwe’s ruling party. ZANU (PF), the party which has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980, is old and tired, but it remains the only game in town. The deeply factionalised party has been held together only by its determination to hold on to power. ZANU’s domination of political space, and its fightback from political losses in the 2000 and 2008 elections, mean that forming an alternative ‘political formation’ was not an attractive option for political heavyweights.

But even though the military has long played an important role in Zimbabwe’s politics, especially since the period of political crisis in the 2000s, an actual coup remained unexpected, if only because it would be difficult to claim the mantle of ZANU while appearing to trash the legacy of President Mugabe.

To a certain extent, this coup is typical of coups in African post-colonial states: they tend to be (relatively) bloodless, and make claims restoring civilian rule. So, this fits a well-known pattern. What is really different, of course, is that it is the first such movement in the post-liberation southern African states, which have robust (if tattered) party structures.

The military has managed to seize power, declare itself kingmaker, but also retain their position as the heirs of Mugabe’s liberation struggle tradition. This is crucial. No one thought Mugabe would retire or hand-over power willingly, but his lingering collapse into old age risked creating a power vacuum, or, perhaps worse, allowing his wife, Grace, to construct her own power-base around her. She’d made good progress on this project in recent months, as she ploughed ahead targeting the vice-presidency of the party.

Mnangagwa’s firing last week was perhaps Mugabe’s biggest political misjudgement in a long career. The forces positioned around Grace clearly felt they needed to act, to ensure her safe transition from political wife to politician, but they misfired.

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With other rivals to the throne removed in recent years, Mnangagwa had emerged as the key claimant to succeed Mugabe, and many outside observers were said to see him as ‘someone they could do business with’. But Mnangagwa is not a ‘safe pair of hands’. He has been responsible for some of the most brutal episodes in Zimbabwe’s history and is well known for his ruthlessness. He may restore some much-needed stability in the short term, but in the long term, the military’s incursion into Zimbabwe’s politics sets a very worrying precedent. Zimbabwean politics is already high-stakes, bringing the armed forces in makes the stakes higher, and the costs of losing far more devastating. This sort of zero-sum politics is unlikely to benefit the Zimbabwean people.

Dr Sara Rich Dorman is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh and author of Understanding Zimbabwe: From Liberation to Authoritarianism(2016)