Mugabe resigns, ending 37-year reign over Zimbabwe

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AFP) – Robert Mugabe resigned as Zimbabwe’s president on Tuesday, swept from power as his 37-year reign of autocratic control and brutality crumbled within days of a military takeover.

The move looks set to end Zimbabwe’s worst political crisis since it won independence from Britain in 1980.

The bombshell announcement was made by the Speaker at a special joint session of parliament convened to impeach the 93-year-old who has dominated every aspect of Zimbabwean public life for decades.

On the streets, the news sparked an explosion of wild celebration.

Car horns honked and people erupted into ecstatic cheers and frenzied dancing.

“I, Robert Gabriel Mugabe… hereby formally tender my resignation… with immediate effect,” said the letter which was read out by parliamentary speaker Jacob Mudenda.

“My decision to resign is voluntary on my part,” he said, speaking of his “concern for the welfare of the people of Zimbabwe and my desire to ensure a smooth, peaceful and non-violent transfer of power”.

In a highly symbolic scene, a man removed a portrait of Mugabe from a room inside the parliament where MPs were gathering for an extraordinary session to impeach the defiant president.

Another bystander replaced it with an image of former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s former deputy. He was once a key Mugabe ally who had been Grace Mugabe’s chief rival to succeed him and whose dismissal on November 6 triggered the crisis.

The ruling ZANU-PF party indicated Mnangagwa could swiftly be named interim president as the country charts a way through the turbulence.

“Mnangagwa… will come back in the next 24 hours or so and he will be the one who will be sworn in to be president for 90 days,” said party spokesman Simon Khaya Moyo on Tuesday.

Outside the building used for the impeachment hearing, a man held up a smiling new-born in white — a potent symbol of hope for the future, prompting rapturous cheering from the crowd.

It capped an unprecedented week in which the military seized control and tens of thousands of ordinary Zimbabweans took to the streets in an extraordinary show of defiance to demand that Mugabe leave.

“I am so happy that Mugabe is gone, 37 years under dictatorship is not a joke. I am hoping for a new Zimbabwe ruled by the people,” Tinashe Chakanetsa, 18, told AFP.