DURBAN, South Africa – Hundreds of flag-waving Zimbabwean football fans denounced President Emmerson Mnangagwa through song when Zimbabwe played the Comoros at Magogo Stadium in Durban on Saturday.
In invective-loaded lyrics, the fans expressed their exasperation with the political and economic crisis at home as they celebrated Zimbabwe’s 2-0 victory over the islanders in a Cosafa Cup quarter-final clash.
Changing the lyrics of the song, ‘Yave Nyama Yekugocha’, the fans sang ‘ED uri…..”
Zimbabwe is going through its worst economic crisis in over a decade, marked by rising prices, hyperinflation, power cuts, dollar shortages and stagnant salaries.
Mnangagwa, who came to power through a military coup in November 2017 before winning a controversial election last July, promised economic and political reforms to break with the past under former President Robert Mugabe.
But many Zimbabweans now say Mnangagwa is worse than Mugabe, as resentment of his regime grows at home and in the diaspora which is home to millions of Zimbabweans, most of them in South Africa.