President Mugabe, who at the age of 93 is the world’s oldest leader, took the decision after his ruling party told him to resign or face impeachment, according to the people, who declined to be identified.
The Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front’s central committee decided at a meeting Sunday to fire Mugabe as its leader and ordered him to resign as president or they’ll remove him, Patrick Chinamasa, the party’s secretary for legal affairs, said in Harare. Emmerson Mnangagwa, who Mugabe dismissed as vice president this month, will be reinstated, take over as interim president and be Zanu-PF’s presidential candidate in elections next year.
“Zanu-PF has fully endorsed the military intervention and lent some democratic credence to what is effectively a military coup,” said Robert Besseling, executive director of political risk advisory firm EXX Africa. “This is the end of the line for Mugabe.”
A former spy chief and defense minister, Mnangagwa had battled for control of the ruling party with Grace Mugabe, the president’s wife, and her fellow members of the so-called Generation-40 faction of mainly younger politicians who didn’t fight in the liberation war against the white-minority regime of Rhodesia. Grace on occasion publicly criticized war veterans and the armed forces.
The party has now expelled Grace and Phelekezela Mphoko, the nation’s other vice president, from its ranks, along with several other senior officials.
Mnangagwa, 75, will inherit an economy in free-fall. An estimated 95 percent of the workforce is unemployed, public infrastructure is crumbling and as many as 3 million Zimbabweans have gone into exile. Many of the country’s woes are rooted in Mugabe’s support for the seizure of white-owned farms, which slashed agricultural production, export earnings and tax revenue.
With additional reports from bloomberg
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