‘Crocodile’ poised to become new leader
HARARE: The son of farmers, he was a hardened freedom fighter by 16, trained as a lawyer and rose to become chief of his new country’s fearsome intelligence service. Known as the “Crocodile”, he once explained the nickname by saying: “It strikes at the appropriate time.”
Emmerson Mnangagwa, the vice-president of Zimbabwe until he was fired last week, now stands to become its new leader.
What role Mr Mnangagwa, 75, played in what appears to have been a coup by his military allies is not yet known, but officials and observers of his rise to power say he shares some of Mr Mugabe’s traits: He is power-hungry, corrupt and a master of repression.
“His ruthlessness is legion,” said Peter Fabricius, a South African journalist and one of many observers who fear that Zimbabwe is exchanging one strongman for another.
In firing Mr Mnangagwa, Mr Mugabe — Zimbabwe’s leader since independence in 1980 and, at 93, the world’s oldest head of state — might have finally overreached, singling out an erstwhile ally with liberation-war credentials and a deep power base of his own.
The firing was widely seen as paving the way for Mr Mugabe’s wife, Grace, to succeed her husband as president, but Grace Mugabe — widely disliked for her volatile temper and expensive tastes — has almost no support among the military officers and intelligence operatives who maintain a tight grip on the country.
By the time of Mr Mnangagwa’s dismissal, the enmity between the vice-president and Grace Mugabe had spilled into the open. He accused her of trying to kill him with poisoned ice cream from her dairy farm, an allegation she denied.
As the army negotiates with Mr Mugabe over a transition in which he would potentially be allowed to go into exile, the mood in the country is subdued. Most Zimbabweans have rejoiced at the downfall of the Mugabes, whose political stranglehold all but ruined the economy and alienated much of the population.
But many see the takeover as a symptom of the infighting and generational divide roiling the governing party, ZANU-PF, rather than a genuine chance at multiparty democracy and economic reform.
The origins of the nickname Crocodile are not clear. Some say it was Mr Mnangagwa’s nom de guerre during the liberation struggle; others say it is derived from his family name.