Still no hint who will be Mugabe’s successor

HARARE: On Monday, the eve of Robert Mugabe’s 93rd birthday, he made it clear that Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is basically running the government, is not the “people’s choice” as his successor.

Mugabe has said no successor had emerged to his rule since independence in 1980 and that the people want him as their candidate in next year’s elections.

Mnangagwa who, unlike Mugabe, fought in the war to end white rule, has long plotted and planned to take over from Mugabe when he dies or retires. And he has been at Mugabe’s side for the last 40 years. Many analysts say it was he who ensured that Zanu-PF won elections by fair means or foul since the emergence of the Movement for Democratic Change in 2000.

But Mugabe will allow no discussion on succession, and his wife Grace has returned to the road to ensure the Mugabe name and “legacy” endure beyond his grave. She said last week at the first of her new round of campaign rallies that her husband would still be chosen to rule the country, even if he was a “corpse”. Previously she has said that if he was too frail to walk, she would push him around the country in a wheelbarrow.

In an interview this birthday week, Mugabe told the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation: “The majority of the people feel that there is no replacement, a successor, who to them is acceptable, as acceptable as I am.”

That “effectively shut the door on Mnangagwa, who until recently was touted as front-runner and Mugabe’s heir apparent”, according to the privately owned Newsday newspaper. It has seen parts of the broadcast which will go out ahead of Mugabe’s birthday celebrations on Saturday at the Rhodes Estate Preparatory School, close to the grave of Cecil John Rhodes.

Mnangagwa, as security minister at the time, is blamed by many for playing a key role in the murder of thousands of opposition supporters by the army in Matabeleland from 1983. – Foreign Service