Free Republic

Harare (AFP) - President Robert Mugabe clings to office, the military is in power and the much-feared ZANU-PF party still rules -- but Zimbabweans put such issues aside Saturday to happily embrace what they hope is a new era for the country. Many protesters welcomed the army's takeover this week that has brought 93-year-old Mugabe's previously impregnable reign to the brink of collapse. "Just look at the crowds here... Finally we can hope to have jobs when I finish university," Tafadzwa Musarurwa, a 22-year-old social studies student at the University of Zimbabwe, who marched in the central business district, told...

The Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, is being confined to his house by soldiers who surrounded his official and private residences, as well as other government buildings. Sources suggest Grace Mugabe, who was being positioned to eventually take over from her husband, has left Zimbabwe for Namibia. The sacked vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, was reported to have returned to Zimbabwe on Wednesday morning from South Africa, where he fled after being stripped of his office. The president of neighbouring South Africa, Jacob Zuma, said he had spoken to Mugabe, who was “fine” and that he was sending special envoys to meet...