Emmerson ‘Crocodile’ Mnangagwa is worse for Zimbabwe than Mugabe

A year ago this week, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa strained credulity when he declared in a Bloomberg TV interview, “We have rejoined the family of nations.” The international community was already losing patience with his inability to deliver economic reforms and Zimbabweans were complaining of a steady erosion of the political freedoms that had come with the 2017 military-led ouster of the dictator Robert Mugabe. Indeed, in some respects the new president, who revelled in the nom de guerre “the Crocodile,” was proving worse than his former boss. The flickering hopes for a new Zimbabwe have now been extinguished. Mnangagwa, cracking down on dissent at home and waving off...