Former First Lady Grace Mugabe tried to get Whatsapp and Twitter shutdown in #Zimbabwe around 7pm on Tuesday 14 November after army tanks drove onto the streets of Harare during the day.

The First Family had just arrived at their ‘Blue Roof’ private mansion in the leafy suburb of Borrowdale around 6pm. An hour later the reality of what was unfolding on the streets hit them.

The Reuters news agency quoting security sources reported that an “Increasingly concerned, Grace put in a call shortly after 7 p.m. to a cabinet minister asking to get WhatsApp and Twitter shut down.”

The minister whose identity was withheld for safety reasons, told the then First Lady “that such a move was the responsibility of state security minister Kembo Mohadi.”

“No-one will stand for a coup. It cannot happen,” Grace was quoted as saying in the recording. Mugabe joined the conversation saying “As you have heard from Amai, is there anything that can be done?”

The unnamed Minister gave the same response before the line went dead.

“Two hours later, two armoured vehicles rolled into the Pockets Hill headquarters of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), according to ZBC sources,” the Reuters report said.

Multiple sources have confirmed how Mugabe’s increasingly abrasive wife authored his demise by picking fights with the army generals and threatening to have them sacked even though she had no executive powers to make such decisions as First Lady.

Even her call to have Whatsapp and Twitter shutdown were used as an example of how she had effectively usurped the authority of the president. The army justified their intervention by arguing that they were clearing “criminal elements around the President.”

This article firstly published on Nehanda radio