[caption id="attachment_229898" align="aligncenter" width="630"] People watch at a bar in Harare, Zimbabwe, as President Robert Mugabe addresses the nation on television
Picture: Reuters/ Philimon Bulawayo[/caption]
Defiant Zim president fails to step down as expected
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe stunned the world yesterday when he failed to resign as expected and instead insisted in a late-night address that he was still in power.
The leader of Zimbabwe’s war veterans said immediately afterwards that plans to impeach the 93-year-old would go ahead.
Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party sacked Mugabe as its leader earlier in the day and told him to resign as head of state, naming ousted vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa as the new party chief.
But Mugabe used the late-night television address to cling to the vestiges of his office.
“The [ruling Zanu-PF] party congress is due in a few weeks and I will preside over its processes,” Mugabe said, pitching the country into further uncertainty.
Many Zimbabweans expected him to resign after the army seized power last week.
However, Mugabe delivered his speech alongside the uniformed generals who were behind the military intervention, conveying the impression that he was unruffled by the turmoil.
Speaking slowly and occasionally stumbling as he read from the pages, Mugabe talked of the need for solidarity to resolve national problems.
He made no reference to the chorus for him to resign and shrugged off last week’s dramatic military intervention.
“The operation I have alluded to did not amount to a threat to our well-cherished constitutional order nor did it challenge my authority as head of state, not even as commander -in-chief,” he said.
Instead, he urged harmony and comradeship.
“Whatever the pros and cons of how they [the army] went about their operation, I do acknowledge their concerns,” Mugabe said.
“We must learn to forgive and resolve contradictions, real or perceived, in a comradely Zimbabwean spirit.”
His address provoked immediate anger.
“That speech has nothing to do with realities. We will go for impeachment and we are calling people back to the streets,” Chris Mutsvangwa, head of the influential war veterans’ association, said.
Protest are set to go ahead on Wednesday.
On Saturday, in scenes of public elation not seen since Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, huge crowds marched and sang their way through Harare and other cities, believing Mugabe was about to step down.
“What you saw yesterday, it shows that the people have spoken,” Mordecai Makore, 71, a retired teacher, said.
“All we want is peace, a good life with a working economy that creates jobs for our people. “We will continue praying for that. “I want my children and grandchildren to live a normal good life.”
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangarai said he was baffled by Mugabe’s failure to resign. Sources suggest Mugabe has been battling to delay his exit and to secure a deal guaranteeing future protection for him and his family.
Mugabe’s 52-year-old wife, Grace, who had harboured ambitions of succeeding her husband, was also expelled from Zanu-PF yesterday, along with at least three cabinet ministers who had formed the backbone of her “G40” faction.
Meanwhile, the EFF has welcomed Mugabe’s removal as president of Zanu-PF. The party said yesterday the decision was long overdue.
The factional succession race that triggered Zimbabwe’s sudden crisis was between party hardliner Mnangagwa – known as the Crocodile – and a group called Generation 40, or G40, because its members are generally younger, which campaigned for Grace’s cause.