Mnangagwa fired for ‘traits of disloyalty’
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe fired Emmerson Mnangagwa as vice-president on Monday for showing “traits of disloyalty”, his information minister said.
Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe fired Emmerson Mnangagwa as vicepresident on Monday for showing “traits of disloyalty”, his information minister said, removing a favourite to succeed the 93-year-old leader.
Mnangagwa’s removal provides a boost for Mugabe’s wife, Grace, who has been a vocal critic of the vicepresident and is also seen as a potential successor to her husband.
“The vice-president has consistently and persistently exhibited traits of disloyalty, disrespect, deceitfulness and unreliability,” Information Minister Simon Khaya Moyo said.
“It had become evident that his conduct in his discharge of his duties had become inconsistent with his official responsibilities,” Moyo said.
Mnangagwa’s top aide, Christopher Gwatidzo, said he had not seen the statement by Moyo.
Grace Mugabe, nicknamed “Gucci Grace” for her love of shopping, called Mnangagwa a “coup plotter” and a “coward” on Sunday in a speech that inflamed an already bad-tempered rift in the ruling Zanu-PF.
It followed a speech by Mugabe at a rally on Saturday at which he publicly rebuked his deputy for the first time.
The reaction of the military could be key. Some army generals backed Mnangagwa to succeed Mugabe and have publicly said they will not allow someone who did not fight in the 1970s independence war to rule. Grace Mugabe did not fight in that war.
She made international headlines in August, when a South African model said the Zimbabwean first lady whipped her with an electric cable in a Johannesburg hotel suite. She denied the allegations.
The fight in Zanu-PF has overshadowed an economic crisis marked by chronic shortages of cash and spiralling prices of goods, raising fears of a return to hyperinflation.
Mnangagwa was Mugabe’s protege and had been at his side through five decades of prison, guerrilla war and post-liberation government. Questions are being raised about what caused the fallout between the two.
By firing Mnangagwa, Mugabe has removed one of his last remaining liberation war comrades who have stood by him since independence in 1980.
However, Grace Mugabe said on Sunday that Mnangagwa had always been plotting against her husband.
Mnangagwa’s biggest undoing may well have been his vocal supporters, who kept prodding Mugabe to step down. Mugabe has a history of punishing ambition in Zanu-PF.
Relations also cooled between the two men in August after suggestions by Mnangagwa’s allies that he had been poisoned by ice cream from a dairy owned by the Mugabes.
That Mnangagwa’s expulsion was announced by a government minister and not the chief secretary to the president and cabinet also spoke to the deterioration in the relationship.
Mugabe plans to contest elections due in 2018 and is likely to face a weakened and fractured opposition.
His main rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, has been in and out of a South African hospital after announcing in 2016 he had colon cancer.