I’m sure the party is still raging in Zim, as it should, because kicking Bob to the curb is cause for national celebration.

We showed you some of those joyous scenes HERE, including the portrait stomp, and I have no doubt the dops will be flowing freely again this evening.

Of course, eventually, we were going to have to take a closer look at Emmerson Mnangagwa, “The Crocodile”, who will today be sworn in as Zimbabwe’s new president.

Chances are you’ve heard murmurings about his past, and we don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun, but the Daily Beast have outlined why everyone says he has skeletons in the closet.

Shall we?

…there is nothing in the Crocodile’s record to suggest he has any interest in establishing democracy and good governance.

Mnangagwa has been fully complicit in every crime and atrocity the Mugabe regime has undertaken from its inception. Beginning with the early 1980s slaughter by North Korean-trained soldiers of some 25,000 members of a minority tribe, which he allegedly oversaw as head of the country’s intelligence services, to the repeated rigging of elections and violent assaults on opposition leaders, Mnangagwa stood alongside Mugabe every step of the way.

The main driver of last week’s coup replacing Mugabe with Mnangagwa—the powerful band of ex-guerrilla fighters known as “war veterans”—was the same group that drove the disastrous land-reform policy of the early 2000s. And the leader of the military who orchestrated the entire affair, General Constantine Chiwenga, is one such veteran who, like Mnangagwa, is listed among the 200 officials sanctioned by the United States under the 2001 Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act…

Having gone to such lengths to preserve their privileges, the generals are unlikely to let ZANU-PF lose its grip over the country via something so pedestrian as a free and fair election.

Zimbabweans may be relieved of Robert Mugabe, but they are hardly relieved of the system of violence, corruption, and the dangerous conflation of party and state that sustained his rule. And the new boss, sadly, may be the same as the old.

Over on the Guardian, it’s more of the same:

“Mnangagwa isn’t exactly a fresh face. He’s been with Mugabe since 1976. He was the chief hatchet man for Mugabe on and off for 40 years. That’s a fact that hasn’t suddenly become irrelevant,” said the historian Stuart Doran.

Perhaps the most controversial episode from Mnangagwa’s past is his role in ethnic massacres in the 1980s, carried out under Mugabe’s watch as part of a vicious post-independence power struggle with other factions. Thousands of civilians were massacred by the Zimbabwean military, mostly ethnic Ndebeles in Matabeleland.

Mnangagwa was in charge of intelligence services at the time. He has blamed the uniformed military for the killings. But there has never been any real accounting for the deaths, which have left a deeply painful legacy…

Human rights groups also say Mnangagwa played a key role in violence directed at the growing political opposition in Zimbabwe. He is blamed for repression during the 2008 election campaign so intense that the opposition candidate eventually dropped out of the race, leaving the way clear for Mugabe to remain in power.

“It’s difficult to see how going forward he can be respectful of human rights, given his history,” said Dewa Mahvinga, southern Africa analyst for Human Rights Watch. “People may not see it now, or realise now, because of the relief of seeing the end of Mugabe’s political era, but Zimbabwe is in grave danger in terms of constitutional democracy.”

I’m sorry, Zimbo friends, we’re going to end it there.

You folks just keep on necking that Chibuku and celebrating the downfall of a tyrant. Take as long as you need, and when you’re ready turn an eye to the future.

[sources:dailybeast&guardian]