Zimbabwe, 2017 — military coup
Event Summary
In mid-November 2017, Zimbabwe's military placed President Robert Mugabe, in power since 1980, under house arrest and took control of state broadcasting, days after Mugabe had dismissed his vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, widely seen as positioning his wife Grace Mugabe to succeed him. Mugabe formally resigned on November 21, 2017, under pressure including an impeachment process in parliament. Mnangagwa returned from brief exile and was sworn in as president shortly after.
Films & Footage
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Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
How It Unfolded
Hand-coded by Coup Atlas from the sources on this page, using a fixed list of tactics. Only events we have read through carry this coding, so most records do not have it yet.
- Led by
- Military
- How long it took
- 6 days from first move to resolution
- Troop movements in the capital or key cities
- Seizure of broadcasters / coup declaration on state media
- Detention or expulsion of the incumbent leader
- Mass mobilization of civilians (for or against)
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
55211152017- Powell & Thyne id
PT-ZWE-2017- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-552-2017-11-15
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe (deposed).
Baseline coding: Incumbent executive removed from power. Recorded leader fate: deposed; arrested or jailed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
The Daily Star
The Christian Science Monitor
The Telegraph
Wall Street Journal
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →