Mnangagwa’s axing paves way for Grace
The post of deputy president in Zimbabwe has become a poisoned chalice, following this week’s sacking — for the second time in three years — of a deputy president serving under President Robert Mugabe.
His latest show of hand has left little to the imagination on how he intends to manage the prickly succession question that has plagued his Zanu (PF) party for years.
His wife, Grace Mugabe, has now emerged from the shadows to assume an unassailable lead in the race for the highest office. Critics have denounced this as nothing short of a “Mugabe dynasty” being stitched together by the veteran ruler, who turns 94 next February.
Grace launched her short political career in August 2014 when she became head of the Zanu (PF) Women’s League, and has been controversial since.
She has caused offence, has been acerbic in attacks that claimed political casualties, and has watched over the severance of political ties built up by her husband during the days of the liberation struggle.
The most significant of these political ties was the relationship between Emmerson Mnangagwa and Mugabe, which lasted for nearly five decades.
Mnangagwa was relieved of his duties as deputy president on Monday for “disloyalty, deceitfulness and unreliability”, but this hardly masks the factional undercurrents in Zanu (PF) that resulted in him being fired.
Mnangagwa’s exit marked the end of a long career in government, which spanned nearly four decades since independence in April 1980. He had served in various portfolios such as state security minister, defence minister and speaker of parliament and was widely seen to have been a frontrunner to take over from Mugabe.
But just like his predecessor, Joice Mujuru, Mnangagwa was handed the poisoned chalice in which his standing to take over appeared strong, but was reversed by Mugabe.
Mujuru at the time of her dismissal in December 2014 was accused of plotting a coup and harbouring plans to take over from Mugabe.
Tara O’ Connor, director of Africa Risk Consulting in London, says it has been a strategy of Mugabe to strengthen the hand of his rivals, raise their hopes and then dismiss them.
“It fits the bill for Mugabe’s long-standing pattern of controlling Zanu (PF) by rotating vice-presidents, but by sacking Mnangagwa he alienates his most ambitious and dangerous rival,” O’Connor says.
“In doing so, he consolidates his unpopular wife Grace’s position ahead of elections, but it is a move that has ‘fin de [end of] regime’ written all over it.”
At the centre of Mugabe’s firing of his deputies has been Grace, who has led a frontline attack for several months. The same strategy was used against Mnangagwa, one of the last remaining leaders from the bush war of the 1980s who had stood by Mugabe’s side. Grace publicly denigrated him at youth rallies.
In the run-up to the removal of Mujuru, Grace had also used her “meet the people” rallies, masked as a celebratory tour of the party provinces, to up the ante against Mujuru.
But with the removal of Mnangagwa from government, Grace now appears to be the clear favourite to assume, in a few weeks, the vacant deputy president post.
The pair of Mugabe and Grace leading Zimbabwe would be a first for Africa and would see the country join Nicaragua and Azerbaijan, which are led by a husband and wife duo.
The Zanu (PF) Youth League, led by Kudzanai Chipanga, has called for Grace to assume the post of vice-president.
It would be a meteoric rise for Grace who was once a member of the government typist pool and had an affair with Mugabe when his late wife, Sally, was suffering from a kidney condition.
Piers Pigou, southern Africa director at the International Crisis Group says the youth league was a “hired gun” to help smooth Grace’s path to a government position. “Crowds love spectacles and Grace is guaranteed to provide a spectacle. No one knows what she is going to do or say next,” says Pigou.
Part of Grace’s strategy in part has been to cast herself as a mother figure. Her supporters affably call her “Amai” (mother). They have also popularised the slogan, “Munhu wese kuna amai” (Everyone must support mother) in glowing praises.
As the “mother of the nation” Grace can conjure up some justification for her actions — a mother can scold, berate and have her way with children.
Although eyeing the presidency, it will be a tall order for Grace to shake off the heavy baggage she carries and which renders her unpresidential. She is reported to have spent $1.3m on a diamond ring in 2016, seized the Harare properties owned by a Lebanese diamond dealer, kicked villagers off their land in Mazowe and in July took over a dam in the area.
In 2009 she beat up British photographer Richard Jones in Hong Kong and has had several altercations with journalists in Singapore where Mugabe travels for medical treatment.
In August, she allegedly assaulted model Gabriella Engels at a hotel in Sandton. Mugabe might well now have to begin grooming his wife into someone more presidential.