Categories: Stories

What fascinates people about Mugabe succession?

What is it that fascinates people about President Robert Mugabe’s succession? Is it the fact that he has been in power too long and therefore should go, or is it his age, or is it that the country’s economy is down and will not recover until he is gone?

The debate about Mugabe’s succession has been going on for nearly two decades now but he continues to hang on to power, legitimately one must add.

The debate about his succession, right now, does not seem to take into consideration that, constitutionally, he has three more years in office.

While in Tanzania recently, I am fascinated by the fact that people often asked me who is going to succeed Mugabe, but no one could tell me who is going to succeed President Jakaya Kikwete yet he is stepping down in October this year when he completes his second and final term.

This left me wondering whether Kikwete’s succession does not really matter because he is going to step down, but in the case of Mugabe, people need to know because no one knows whether he is going to step down in 2018.

The question about Mugabe’s succession, in my humble opinion, also indirectly implies that the opposition has no chance of ever beating Mugabe otherwise people would not be obsessed with who from his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front will succeed him if someone from the opposition can beat him.

 

See: God, Mugabe ad The West

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This post was last modified on February 24, 2015 7:02 am

Charles Rukuni

The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.

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