By Paul Nyathi| Former President Robert Mugabe says that Zimbabweans have never experienced as bad an army operation as was seen in the period the army toppled him from power.

Mugabe said this in his first ever televised interview on SABC News on Thursday evening.

Narrating the ordeal he went through in the hands of the army at his Blue Roof home, Mugabe said that the nation was terrified to submission by the presence of the heavily armed soldiers. ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW…

“Never before have Zimbabweans seen such from the soldiers,” said Mugabe.

The defiant former President declared that his removal from power was not constitutionally but was a military coup.

“Many have refused to acknowledge that it was a coup but Emerson (Mnangagwa) would never have been President without the assistance of the army which makes it a coup,” he said.

The former strong man said that the army disarmed both the army and the Central Intelligence Agency in the process crippling state security.

“The police had all their weapons completely taken by the army.”

Mugabe said that members of the CIO were rounded up with some of them maimed and killed.

“They were bashed on the heads, some of them killed and some still missing up to today at the hands of the army,” lamented Mugabe.

Critics have harshly attacked Mugabe for his cries on the treatment he claims to have got at the hands of the army claimimg that he exposed Zimbabweans through worse treatment in his near four decades of rule.

“Mugabe can not claim that Zimbabweans saw the worst of the army because he was being removed from power, did he see the Gukurahundi soldiers,” questioned a commentator on social media.

In the interview Mugabe tried to justify his self orchestrated Gukurahundi atrocities claiming that his government was dealing with fellow liberation movement PF ZAPU he accused of hiding arms of war after the liberation war.

Over 20 000 people were murdered by the soldiers he deployed, a figure which Mugabe disputed in his interview.

Mugabe however claimed that his wife, Grace’s few security details managed to deal with an army unit that was bombarding homes of his two right-hand men Professor Jonathan Moyo and Saviour Kasukuwere and rescued them with their families.

Mugabe claimed that Kasukuwere and Moyo raised a cry for help from the former First Lady when the army was attacking their homes where on she disbursed her security details to rescue them.

“She sent her personal security details to rescue them and told them to go out and rescue the families though they risked being killed on the way.”

He confirmed previous speculations that Moyo and Kasukuwere took refuge at his home for a while before they fled to exile.

“The two were rescued with their wives and children and brought here to us.”

“We later told the two to leave and go out of the country and leave their children with us,” he said.

“We don’t know how they found their way out or where they went to.”