Yesterday was momentous day. In the early hours I got a message from a friend living near Mugabe's residence at 2.33 am. 'There's been a lot of shooting at Mugabe's house. I just heard all shootings.'
I phoned him. He was wide awake and fully alert. He said there were about 30 shots. It was not wild shooting on automatic. This was professional.
I was down in Bulawayo. I knew I had to get to Harare quickly to where Laura and our daughter Anna were. I jumped into the vehicle with our sons, Joshua and Stephen. As we drove through the night we got a message that the ZBC state broadcaster had been taken over by the military. It was then that I really knew that a coup had taken place.
At the first road toll I asked the lady what she had heard about the road ahead. 'There is army. They are being harsh.'
We drove on for the next hour or so. It was tense. There was a mixture of excitement and trepidation. I suddenly felt the need to pray out loud. As I was praying we came around a bend and we saw soldiers, lots of them, all heavily armed in the middle of the road. I slowly ground to a halt and opened my window.
'You are going too fast,' the first soldier said menacingly. I smiled at him and put my hand out of the window. 'You are in control,' I said disarmingly. He shook my hand and he waved us on. We crawled forward repeatedly being stopped as we slowly went past over 200 armed soldiers in full battle dress spread out over about a kilometre by the Munyati river.
Eventually we got past all the guns and we carried on north. There were no police now. The hated yellow jacketed Zimbabwe Republic Police, sent to extort money from motorists every few kilometres, were not out. The soldiers didn't seem to be extorting any money. We did not know what to expect from them though. Would their discipline hold? At the next toll we were told that civilian motorists had been forced by the army to kneel in the water of the river.
At the next military road block in Norton we waited some time. Bus passengers from the other side of the road block had been made to get out of their buses and were walking. 'Why are you walking?' I asked a passing woman through my open window. She looked away and wouldn't answer – and then tittered nervously to her friend.
The road was eerily quiet as we entered Harare. In the centre there were war like armoured personal carriers bristling with guns. A soldier stopped us. We had to make a U turn. The tension was palpable.
I drove to the airport to pick up a man from Swedish TV. At the entrance to the airport there were another 20 or so soldiers waving their guns around. Some of the cars ahead of me were being searched. A soldier peered into the empty back of my truck and waved me on.
In the car park I asked an official when the soldiers had arrived. He was nervous and too frightened to tell me. 'Ask them,' he said. I later discovered that they had arrived at about the same time as the shooting at the President's house – and the take over of the radio station – and the stationing of army road blocks on the roads. It was clearly well planned.
It is now the day after the coup. It's quiet. My imagination is beginning to run. Our President is cowering in a corner controlled by his own army. He is emasculated, stripped of his power, unable to work his evil genius with free rein any longer. He is a cowering King John.
He is all that most of us have ever known. It is hard to imagine Zimbabwe without him. Will he resurface as a puppet President? None of us know.
My imagination runs past that. I imagine Zimbabwe as a free country. I imagine Zimbabwe's laws to be good. I imagine its police force to be friends of the people and not enemies. I imagine its leaders being prepared to put themselves under the law and not above it. I imagine corruption rooted out. I imagine the God given potential of each individual being able to be realised because law and reason and transparency and freedom from fear of the oppressor is a reality. I imagine a leader who is there for the country and not himself. I imagine a righteous leader who rules with justice!
Are these things too hard to imagine? Now is the time of opportunity. We need to dream of things that are true and good and pure. We need to pray for new beginning with truth and justice and a competent and unselfish leader that values truth and fears God!
