Mugabe faces little threat from army or party

By Cris Chinaka

HARARE (Reuters): Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe may lose power when he faces an angry electorate next year, but there are no signs of a serious threat from his ruling party or the army command, analysts said on Wednesday.

Mugabe's main political rival, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, also said there was no reason to believe the army wanted to seize power or to abort the democratic process.

Mugabe himself has shown no signs of worry. The 77-year-old leader, who has ruled the southern African country for two decades, calmly departed Wednesday for a trip to Indonesia.

"The real threat Mugabe is facing ... is from the opposition, not his followers or the military," said political analyst Masipula Sithole. For Mugabe, party leaders and the army high command, "the challenge is collective political survival."

Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Tuesday that some senior Zimbabwean army officers had told neighboring South Africa they might stage a coup against Mugabe if Zimbabwe's growing political and economic crisis resulted in riots.

The officers reportedly said they would rather seize power than be used by Mugabe to crush riots likely to break out due to a looming food shortage. The government said the story had been planted by opponents to destabilize the country.

The commander of Zimbabwe's joint forces said Wednesday that the army was "loyal and committed" to the government.

The 40,000-strong army -- comprising independence war veterans, young recruits born after 1980 and former Rhodesian soldiers -- has in the past shown no appetite for politics.

Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and Mugabe's most serious political challenger, told Reuters, "We have no doubt that the army wants to be seen as a professional army and will not want to get involved in power politics."

Sithole predicted that Mugabe and his close lieutenants in the party and army were busy devising a strategy to win next year's presidential elections "by hook or by crook".

Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party barely defeated the MDC in parliamentary elections marred by a violent campaign against the opposition led by veterans of the 1970s liberation war against white-ruled Rhodesia.

Sithole said, "A coup against Mugabe or the opposition is not only unattainable, it is politically unsustainable. It is practically difficult to achieve in an army where the rank and file wants to stay out of politics."

Analysts say Mugabe has consolidated his power within ZANU-PF through a well-developed political patronage system and by fanning divisions among potential rivals.

He has also purged ZANU-PF ranks of competitors.

In the army, Mugabe has kept the senior officer corps loyal by either co-opting them into ZANU-PF structures or smoothing their entry into lucrative business schemes.

Analysts say top army officers are profiting from mining ventures in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia have thousands of troops backing the Kinshasa government against rebels supported by Rwanda and Uganda. The government has denied these allegations.

Analyst John Makumbe of the University of Zimbabwe said most of the military would likely be happy and fear a change in fortune with a new government. "They may try to get the army to defend ZANU-PF and Mugabe, but not the other way round," he said.

He said Mugabe might be looking for an opportunity to declare a state of emergency and use the army against his opponents.

Soldiers have been deployed in some Zimbabwe townships since the parliamentary polls last year to pressure supporters of the MDC, which enjoys strong backing in urban centers.

Mugabe's biggest threat is facing an electorate increasingly angry over their worsening economic plight, analysts say.