A blackout interrupted President Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe in the middle of his State of the Nation address on Tuesday, forcing him to deliver part of the speech by torchlight.
Mnangagwa delivered his address from the New Parliament Building in Mount Hampden, about 15 miles northwest of the capital of Harare. The massive new headquarters for parliament was built with Chinese assistance in 2022 at a cost of about $200 million.
Power failures are not uncommon in Zimbabwe. Only about one in seven citizens enjoys a regular supply of electricity. Many Zimbabweans have resorted to throwing up solar panels to reduce their reliance on the overstressed national power grid.
Even the showpiece New Parliament Building blacks out quite frequently, including a previous awkwardly-timed power failure during the finance minister’s budget 2025 budget speech.
The blackout during Mnangagwa’s speech was even more embarrassing, especially since the government knew the power grid might fail, so it had deployed gas-powered generators for the speech. According to Parliament officials, generator power to the president’s speech was interrupted when a circuit breaker tripped.
Power failures in Zimbabwe can last for hours or days, but the one that interrupted Mnangawa’s speech only lasted about ten minutes.
Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin’ono called the spectacle of Mnangagwa delivering his State of the Nation address by torchlight “a tragic symbol of decay dressed up as leadership” and said the president looked like “a schoolboy caught doing homework during a power cut.”
“This is utterly dispiriting; it is a perfect metaphor for what has become of Zimbabwe. A whole government, led by a man who claims to be building the nation, cannot even keep the lights on during its most important annual event,” Chin’ono sighed.
Mnangagwa has been in power since 2017, when longtime dictator Robert Mugabe was ousted in a soft military coup. His second and supposedly final term in office ends in 2028, but as Chin’ono hinted in his sarcastic commentary, the ruling ZANU-PF party recently decided to extend Mnangagwa’s term until 2030, and there is growing apprehension among the population that he will run for an unconstitutional third term after that or simply refuse to step down.
The acting director of the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC), Abel Gurupira, was suspended on Wednesday by order of the national power ministry. The ministry said Gurupira would be suspended with pay until an investigation of the power failure could be completed.
The Speaker of the Parliament, Jacob Mudenda, said he suspected Mnangagwa’s speech could have been sabotaged.
“We will go beyond what happened and trace the culprits and deal with them accordingly. Those that will be found wanting will regret the day of their existence,” Mudenda said on Tuesday.
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