Mugabe resisting army pressure to quit: Sources
President Robert Mugabe insists he is Zimbabwe’s only legitimate ruler and balking at mediation by a Catholic priest to allow the 93-year-old leader a graceful exit after a military coup, sources said on Thursday.
A political source who spoke to senior allies holed up with Mugabe and his family in his lavish Harare compound said Mugabe had no plans to resign voluntarily ahead of elections scheduled next year. “It’s a sort of stand-off, a stalemate,” the source said. “They are insisting the president must finish his term.”
The army’s takeover signalled the collapse of the security, intelligence and patronage networks that sustained him through 37 years in power and built him into the “Grand Old Man” of African politics.
The priest, Fidelis Mukonori, who has been mediating between Mugabe and the generals who seized power on Wednesday in a targeted operation against “criminals” in his entourage, had also made little headway, a senior political source told Reuters.
The army appears to want Mugabe, who has led Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, to go quietly and allow a bloodless transition to former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa.
A fighter, both literally and figuratively during a political career that included several assassination attempts, Mugabe now appears to have reached the end of the road.
With the army against him and the police showing no signs of resistance, force is not an option. Similarly, his support inside the ruling party is crumbling and in Harare he is loathed.
Zimbabwean intelligence reports suggest his exit has been in the planning for more than a year. Sources said once Mugabe’s resignation is secured, Mnangagwa would take over as president of an interim unity government that will seek to stabilise the imploding economy.
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