Mugabe ousted

While most Zimbabweans and leaders around the world - or some of them - breathe with relief at the ousting of the dreadful Robert Mugabe, there has to be an element of fear and concern amidst all the cheering and clapping. Military coups seldom run smoothly, and the risk of a slaughter of opponents to the coup has to be high. I love the semantics used by the coup plotters - not a coup but a bloodless correction. When the military use such terminology, watch out for some brutal correction ahead. When General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi ousted democratically-elected President Mohamed Morsi as president of Egypt in 2013, no one called it a coup, especially not the United States which never liked Morsi. That was also a sort of correction because Sisi and his military chums hated the Muslim Brotherhood taking over the country and judged that Morsi and his cronies were bad for the security and happiness of the nation. So, off with his head. Well, not quite, he was imprisoned and charged with causing the deaths of protestors. There were mass jailings of Muslim Brotherhood members. In subsequent violent protests against the "coup", hundreds of people were killed. Some correction! No military coups are gentle affairs. So we'll have to see how General Constantino Chiwenga, the Zimbabwean army chief, conducts himself and his troops in the next few days, and more importantly, what steps are taken by Emmerson Mnangagwa, the fomer vice-president who was sacked by Mugabe, provoking the military takeover. He seems to have returned from his brief flight from the country and the number one person on his list to sort out will no doubt be Grace Mugabe, the hated shoe and handbag-buying wife of Robert Mugabe who fancied herself as the next leader of Zimbabwe and had gathered a tight bunch of devotees around her. Grace has now fled but Mnangagwa, a big bloke nicknamed the Crocodile - presumably not for affectionate reasons - looks like the type of man who will want to iron out any political wrinkles as he takes over power. What will The Crocodile do with Robert Mugabe? Let him retire in luxury or put him into an old people's home for correction?