The Overthrow of Robert Mugabe

Abstract In The Overthrow of Robert Mugabe: Gender, Coups, and Diplomats, Blessing-Miles Tendi argues that the 2017 military coup that ousted long-time Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, and the generality of coups, cannot be accurately and rigorously understood without examining the crucial role of gender and women’s politics in military seizures of power. Tendi’s book shows that gender and women’s politics pervade military coup causes, dynamics, justifications, and international responses to coups. Contrary to influential representations of Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup and other recent coups as markedly different from past coups, Tendi draws on long gendered histories of military coups in Africa to argue that in reality there are significant continuities in coup characteristics across time. Additionally, Tendi’s highly original study of Zimbabwe’s 2017 coup identifies the motives, dynamics, and trigger of the coup. Despite the existence of an international anti-coup norm and democracy promotion in Africa by Western states, Zimbabwean coup-makers’ direct intervention in politics was largely not publicly condemned or penalized by Western and African diplomats. Tendi uses original interviews with diplomats and politicians involved in external responses to the coup, to address this important puzzle.