HARARE, Zimbabwe — Maybe the scarf was just a scarf after all.

Soon after ousting Robert Mugabe from power, Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zimbabwe’s president, started wearing a colorful scarf wherever he went, on cold and hot days alike, as part of a broader makeover.

Sure, Mr. Mnangagwa had long served as Mr. Mugabe’s hatchet man and was known by the fearsome nickname the Crocodile. But the scarf, with the warm and fuzzy colors of the nation’s flag, appeared to signal a gentler leader and government. It became part of the political discourse and a trending topic on social media.

A little more than a year after Mr. Mugabe’s downfall, Mr. Mnangagwa is now showing his true colors, many Zimbabweans are saying. As demonstrators filled the streets of Harare, the capital, to protest the deteriorating economy, Mr. Mnangagwa reacted in the past week with the same authoritarian reflexes as his predecessor: deploying soldiers and the police to crack down on demonstrators — resulting in the deaths of as many as a dozen individuals — and shutting down the internet.

On Monday night, Mr. Mnangagwa, who had been on an official trip to Russia during the crackdown on protesters, returned to Zimbabwe after aborting a trip to Davos, Switzerland, where he had planned to promote the new Zimbabwe as being open for business.