Harare - Zimbabwe's National Security
Council (NSC) in a maiden news conference on Wednesday accused
allies of the late former leader Robert Mugabe and some
opposition officials of peddling rumours of an impending
military coup and said the country was stable.
Zimbabwe's worst economic crisis in more than a decade and
rising public anger have stoked concern the military, which
ended Mugabe's more than three-decades rule in November 2017,
might step in again.
Giving its first news conference since being formed in 2013,
the NSC said speculation was intensifying that Mugabe allies
living in exile were plotting a comeback with the help of
elements in the military and the opposition.
The NSC is chaired by President Emmerson Mnangagwa and its
members include security ministers and military chiefs, who were
present at Wednesday's media briefing.
"For the avoidance of doubt, there is no coup in the
making," Kazembe Kazembe, the home affairs minister in charge of
the police and an NSC member, told reporters.
"We would like to take this opportunity and assure the
nation and international community at large that Zimbabwe ... is
peaceful and stable internally."
The 2018 elections were supposed to end Zimbabwe's pariah
status with the West, but Mnangagwa's government has been
accused of resorting to Mugabe-era tactics of heavy handedness
against opponents.
The main opposition accuses the government of using a
coronavirus lockdown to erode political rights.
Kazembe said the authorities would tackle those spreading a
"medley of falsehoods".
Without naming them, he accused some foreign embassies in
Harare of misleading their capitals on affairs in Zimbabwe and
relying on the opposition and former ruling party officials in
their intelligence gathering.
"They also have, in the process, brazenly jettisoned any
semblance of diplomatic impartiality and finesse in blatant
violation of the peremptory norms of international law," Kazembe
said.