The past few weeks have been hectic for Zimbabwe, our northern neighbour. Matters came to a head last week, when the military, chafing at the November 6 sacking of Emmerson Mnangagwa as President Robert Mugabe’s joint number two in both government and the ruling Zanu-PF party, staged what has been widely regarded as a coup.

Mnangagwa was ostensibly dismissed for “disloyalty, disrespect, deceitfulness and unreliability”, as well as “little probity in the execution of his duties”. The move was, of course, not linked to his performance but orchestrated by a faction in the ruling party that was determined to block his possible ascendance to the highest office in the land, fearing that he might not allow Mugabe’s family to continue to enjoy the fabulous wealth they have reportedly amassed once he is no longer the CEO of Zimbabwe Inc.

The allegations against Mnangagwa are laughable, given the man’s pedigree. His family settled in the then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) in the 1950s after his father had been banished from present-day Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) for his activism against British colonialism.

The young Mnangagwa would join the youth wing of the United National Independence Party, at the time the main liberation movement in his adopted country, and rapidly work his way into the leadership of the wing.

Meanwhile, the nationalist struggle in Southern Rhodesia was gathering steam, and Mnangagwa readily signed up for military training in Egypt when the Zimbabwe African People’s Union, of which he had become a member, opted to abandon peaceful forms of struggle in favour of a bush war.

He switched to the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu) at its formation in 1963 and was among the first cohort that the new party sent to China for advanced military training. On returning to Southern Rhodesia, the group engaged in acts of sabotage, including blowing up trains and rail infrastructure.

The group was eventually rounded up by the Rhodesian authorities (the country ceased to be Southern Rhodesia when the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland broke up in 1963) and condemned to the gallows by a court. Mnangagwa had his sentence commuted to a ten-year prison term after a doctor’s testimony that he was under the then legal age of majority of 21. And thus began his long association with Mugabe, who himself had been incarcerated.

Mnangagwa used his time in prison to further his education and was on the verge of earning a law degree when he was released and deported to Zambia. After completing his studies at the University of Zambia, he went into private practice in Lusaka. His career was short-lived, as Mugabe, who was now in Mozambique and had managed to entrench himself as the leader of Zanu, handpicked him as his special assistant, a position that gave him oversight of security within Zanu.

When Zimbabwe became independent in 1980, Mugabe appointed him National Security Minister and he went on to preside over crucial Ministries such as Defence and Justice – and also had a stint as Speaker of Parliament – during his 37 years in government. Many thought Mnangagwa was bluffing when he warned his former boss in the aftermath of his dismissal: “We will very soon control the levers of power in our beautiful . . . country.” By that time, his aides had spirited him out of the country on getting wind of his imminent arrest for a slew of malfeasances, including corruption, attempted murder and murder. The soldiers were at pains last week to deny that they had staged a coup, insisting that Mugabe and his family were safe and that they were only targeting the ‘criminals’ around him.

My retort is: it was indeed a coup, which the African Development Bank (AfDB) defines as a sudden, often violent overthrow of a government by a small group of military, police or security forces that lasts from a few hours to at least one week. But what is rather surprising is why the military did not seize control earlier. According to the AfDB, the sub-Saharan African countries that had experienced coups in the decade prior to 2012 ranked lowly in terms of governance, standards of living, respect for human rights, the degree of liberalisation and the degree of integration in the region within which a country is located.

Save for regional integration, Zimbabwe has not been big on any of these criteria in a very long time. This is why scores of Zimbabweans have left their motherland in the last decade-plus in search of a better life elsewhere. Millions are believed to be now resident in South Africa, legally or illegally. A study conducted by the AfDB states that 200 military coups occurred in sub-Saharan Africa from 1960 to 2012, 45% of which were successful.

While it is no surprise that Southern Africa had fewer coups than any of the other regions in sub-Saharan Africa – West Africa, Central Africa and East Africa – from 1960 to 2012, I doubt that many people would know that 16 coups were staged in our region during this period, with one in Swaziland (in 1973) and two in Lesotho (in 1986 and 1991) being successful.

It is also not widely known that military officers in Zambia attempted a putsch in 1980, 1982, 1990 and 1998, and that the latest seizure of control by Zimbabwe’s army is the second, after a failed attempt in 1982, according to the AfDB. The events in Zimbabwe took place despite the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC’s) stance on violent power seizures.

A few months ago, the regional bloc’s standby force, comprising troops from Angola, Mozambique and South Africa, intervened in Lesotho after the assassination of the country’s army chief by disgruntled soldiers amid fears of an impending insurrection. Speaking to journalists at the time, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, warned: “Not in any corner of [the SADC region], not in any corner of our continent, will we tolerate a military coup.”

At the time of writing, South African President and SADC chairperson Jacob Zuma had issued a statement condemning the Zimbabwe army’s move and a meeting of Foreign Ministers from the bloc was due to be held in Gaborone, the Botswana capital. But whether the SADC would live up to its stance should the generals up north dig in their heels remains to be seen.