Zimbabwe’s Mnangagwa to be sworn in as president on Friday
Zimbabwe’s former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa will be sworn in as president on Friday, marking a new era for a country dominated by Robert Mugabe whose swift downfall this week ended nearly four decades in power.
The ruling ZANU-PF Party has nominated Mnangagwa to fill the vacancy left by Mugabe on Tuesday, and he will be sworn in on Friday, said Jacob Mudenda, the speaker of Parliament, Reuters reported.
Mugabe sacked Mnangagwa as vice president two weeks ago to smooth a path to the succession for his wife Grace, who is much younger than the 93-year-old leader. Mnangagwa fled for his own safety and the military seized control, shattering Mugabe’s authority.
Mugabe held on for a week with ZANUPF Party and others urging him to resign. He stepped down finally on Tuesday, moments after Parliament began an impeachment process. People danced in the streets and some brandished posters of Mnangagwa and army chief, General Constantino Chiwenga, who led the takeover.
Mnangagwa will land at Manyame Airbase in Harare at 6 p.m. (1600 GMT), state broadcaster ZBC said.
“I am advised that the swearing-in ceremony is planned for Friday,” Mudenda said. Mnangagwa issued a statement from hiding on Tuesday, calling on Zimbabweans to unite to rebuild the country.
Other African countries have seen veteran leaders ousted by popular uprisings or in elections.
By contrast, the military has ushered Mnangagwa to the threshold of power and for decades he was a faithful ally of Mugabe in charge of internal security in the mid-1980s when rights groups say 20,000 civilians were killed.
Zimbabwe’s next leader faces the task of restoring the country’s fortunes. Alleged human rights abuses and flawed elections prompted many Western countries to impose sanctions in the early-2000s that hurt the economy.
Mugabe leaves a complex legacy. He is among the last of a generation of African leaders who led their countries to independence and then ruled. That group includes Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Felix Houphouet-boigny in Ivory Coast and Nelson Mandela in South Africa.
But he also presided over a steep decline in Zimbabwe’s economy, won a series of elections after stifling the opposition and he stands accused of persecuting opponents.
The forced takeover of whiteowned farms from around 2000, aimed to bolster populist support for Mugabe, but crippled foreign exchange earnings from agriculture and led to a period of hyperinflation.
“President Mugabe will be remembered as a fearless pan-africanist liberation fighter and the father of the independent Zimbabwean nation,” the chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, said in a statement.