The Paper Round: Mugabe quits - Hip, hip Harare!

It is only natural that the news of Robert Mugabe’s resignation (imminent and eventual) has been covered fiercely by Zimbabwe’s neighbours – especially in South Africa. We won’t patronise you with the reasons why – we’re sure you’re clever enough to work it out for yourself.

Most South African papers kept things fairly neutral – though The Times got clever with “Bobshell!”

Other South African headlines included “At last” from The Citizen, “A New Zimbabwe” and “People Power Prevails” from The Star.

Further afield, the news was on the cover of an Angolan paper, too. “Bye, bye, Mugabe,” read the front page of a Portuguese paper – maybe the language doesn’t do alliteration.

Shifting over to China (we won’t patronise you with these relationship details) it was only the Shanghai Daily that had any notable coverage for the news at the time of writing.

Over in the United Kingdom, the news dominated the papers. The winner of the headline game goes to the Metro with “Hip, Hip, Harare!”

As is the case with most of the print pages, in the United Arab Emirates, The National led with the celebrations from parliament. The news was a front page footnote in the Gulf News, too.

In Zimbabwe itself, the message was a simple one as The Herald summed it up: Tata, Cde President.

Beyond print, every major news site in the world carried the story – and the subsequent celebrations. Now we Harare up and wait to see what happens from here. DM