HARARE, Zimbabwe – Zimbabwe is gripped by a fresh wave of coup panic after an unverified video ricocheted across social media platforms, declaring that the country's military is on the verge of striking again. The footage—brimming with coded language and archival imagery—directly asks, “Is Military About to STRIKE Again! : COUP IMMINENT in Zimbabwe,” tapping into raw public anxiety that the fragile peacekeeping arrangement forged after the 2017 ouster of Robert Mugabe is on the verge of spectacular collapse. While the provenance of the video remains murky, the urgency of its message has forced a nation already reeling from hyperinflation, electricity blackouts, and a crumbling currency to confront a terrifying question: is the army, which has never truly ceded its role as ultimate power broker, preparing to intervene once more?
The warning lands at a moment of unprecedented factional tension inside the ruling ZANU-PF party. President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, the former army general who masterminded the November 2017 “Operation Restore Legacy” that ended Mugabe’s 37-year rule, are locked in a bitter succession struggle. The uneasy pact between the two men has unraveled with stunning speed. Chiwenga’s camp has publicly accused Mnangagwa of engineering an internal palace coup to extend his rule beyond the constitutionally mandated two-term limit. Meanwhile, Mnangagwa loyalists have moved aggressively to purge military figures deemed too close to the Vice President. In March 2025 alone, three senior Zimbabwe National Army officers were quietly retired, while the Central Intelligence Organisation—a key pillar of Mnangagwa’s power—has been accused of orchestrating the poisoning of Chiwenga during a trip to Rwanda in 2024, an allegation that refuses to die.
“The military has always been the final arbiter of power in Zimbabwe. The current turmoil inside ZANU-PF is not just a political squabble; it is a tinderbox with the army holding the match,” said Harare-based political commentator Tawanda Moyo in an interview. “The 2017 intervention was swift and surgical because the security apparatus was united in its contempt for the Mugabe-Grace faction. Today the security apparatus is itself fractured, which makes any new intervention dangerously unpredictable.”
The Echoes of 2017
This is the combustible backdrop against which the coup video is circulating. The footage, which has been viewed more than 100,000 times within 48 hours on some platforms, juxtaposes images of soldiers from the 2017 deployment with recent protest crackdowns and a voiceover that warns “the Generals have lost patience.” While independent verification is impossible—the uploader, a channel with a history of publishing anonymous tip-offs, has not responded to requests for comment—the message has found a receptive audience. On the streets of downtown Harare, shoppers and vendors openly discuss a “November repeat,” a phrase that itself underscores the lasting psychological imprint of the military’s last intervention.
Regional security analyst Dr. Phillan Zamchiya, who has advised the Southern African Development Community (SADC) on political transitions, warned that the current crisis carries dangers that exceed 2017. “In 2017, there was a clear chain of command and a unified objective. Today the military is riddled with competing patronage networks—some loyal to Mnangagwa, others to Chiwenga, and a significant bloc that simply wants to protect their vast economic interests. A misstep by any faction could trigger a bloody internecine conflict, not a velvet coup.” Zimbabwe’s army, currently estimated at around 30,000 active personnel, controls significant business holdings through the Zimbabwe Defence Forces Service Corporation, including diamond mines, farming operations, and transport logistics. Those commercial empires hang in the balance.
A Region on Edge
Zimbabwe’s internal turmoil is never a purely domestic affair. The country sits astride a strategic corridor that links Southern Africa’s mineral heartland to the ports of Maputo, Beira, and Durban. Even the rumour of instability sends shockwaves through the region. The Beitbridge border post, the busiest inland port of entry in sub-Saharan Africa, processes more than 15,000 trucks and 25,000 people daily, connecting South Africa to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, Malawi, and beyond. A breakdown in civil order would immediately paralyse supply chains and trigger fuel and food shortages that would be felt from Lubumbashi to Lusaka. “A Zimbabwean coup is a SADC-wide economic event,” noted a Pretoria-based trade economist who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. “The last time there was serious instability, cross-border trade contracted by 12% in a single quarter. With South Africa’s own economy under strain, the region can ill afford a repeat.”
The humanitarian consequences would be even more acute. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has already documented a 35% surge in Zimbabwean asylum applications in South Africa this year, driven by political repression and hunger. A fully-fledged military takeover would likely shatter the already overstretched asylum systems in Botswana and Mozambique, neither of which has the capacity for a sudden displacement emergency. In 2024, the World Food Programme classified 4.3 million Zimbabweans as acutely food insecure. Any disruption to the fragile agricultural season, which relies on imported fertiliser and fuel routed through South Africa, would turn a chronic crisis into a catastrophe.
Diplomatic sources within SADC, speaking on condition of strict confidentiality, confirm that the regional bloc’s early warning systems have been elevated to “amber” status for Zimbabwe. The SADC double-troika—comprising the chairs of the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation—has held two emergency video conferences in the past week, though the official communiqués have been deliberately bland. Behind closed doors, the fear is that a coup would destroy what little credibility SADC retains after its failure to prevent the military-backed power-grab in Gabon in 2023. South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, who carries the unenviable burden of being both the region’s economic anchor and a vocal proponent of democratic norms, has reportedly dispatched a special envoy to Harare to urge restraint.
The international dimension is further complicated by Zimbabwe’s deepening ties with China and Russia, both of which have substantial mining investments. Beijing holds approximately $2.3 billion in outstanding loans to Harare, secured against future lithium and platinum output. Moscow, meanwhile, has signed a strategic minerals agreement that gives Russian parastatals exploration rights in the mineral-rich Great Dyke. Any disruption to the political status quo will force Beijing and Moscow to decide whether to double down on their support for a volatile client or risk losing footholds in the region. The West, still enforcing targeted sanctions against Mnangagwa and his inner circle, has limited leverage but would face immense pressure to respond if a coup precipitated a refugee wave into the European Union.
For ordinary Zimbabweans, the coup chatter is a grisly replay of a movie they thought had ended. “We cannot live through another year of fear,” said a vendor at the Mbare wholesale market who gave her name only as Maidei. “Every time the soldiers move, we lose more—our jobs, our children who cross the Limpopo, our hope. If the video is a hoax, it is a cruel one. If it is true, God help us all.” The video’s creators have not offered a timeline, nor have they produced hard evidence. But in a country where the line between rumour and reality is wafer-thin, and where the army already proved it will act when power is contested, the message has ignited a collective national flashback — one that Zimbabwe and its neighbours cannot afford to ignore.
