A leading Japanese academic with expertise in African politics, Sadaharu Kataoka, has described the November 2017 military intervention by the Zimbabwe Defence Forces as a “smart coup.” The military intervention ultimately resulted in the fall of former president Robert Mugabe. Kataoka also warned that the 2018 harmonised elections were a chance for Zimbabwe to regain legitimacy and that if anything bad happened it would spell doom for the country. In an interview with NewsDay, Kataoka said,
I can say it’s a military coup, but I think they were very prepared because they didn’t use a violent method, but it was military pressure and finally he (Mugabe) resigned, so I think it was a very strategic, prepared and smart coup.
Moving forward, the true ultimate stage that will determine Zimbabwe’s progression forward is this election. It is to show the world that this is the new moment because if anything bad happens in this election, then it is over,
…in the 1980s, Zimbabwe was a good country and we had Japanese investors here, but after the autocratic rule, they all left, but I can tell you that they can come back.
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