ZANU-PF on death watch

The article says the succession issue is quite murky in Zimbabwe because even the new constitution agreed in 2013 is not clear about who will succeed Mugabe should he die in office.

“The 2013 national constitution stipulates that if the president dies, resigns, or is removed the first vice president assumes office until the end of the presidential term,” it says.

“In last-minute bargaining over the implementation of the constitution, however, this provision was deferred for ten years; it will only apply after elections in 2023. Until then, the vice president who last acted in the president’s absence will serve for 90 days while the ruling party determines a successor.

“The problem is that the ZANU-PF party constitution, which was reportedly revised in 2014 to address the party’s internal procedure for replacing its leaders, has never been made public.

“The 90-day window for the party to choose a successor is likely to be turbulent. Intraparty dynamics were once understood as a struggle between two main factions: one led by Joice Mujuru, a liberation war heroine and former vice president; the other by current Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, a hard-line fixer and party grandee.

“The ZANU-PF was thus split on vertical lines between two influential barons, each with their own regional followings and presumed power bases within the security services.

“But the established political balance shifted sharply in December 2014, when, following lurid accusations from Grace Mugabe of plots to assassinate the president, Mujuru and her key lieutenants were purged from the party.

“For a moment it seemed that the way had been cleared for Mnangagwa to be anointed as Mugabe’s successor. But, within months, Grace (her position now confirmed as Mugabe’s most influential advisor) turned her ire on the new front-runner, this time alleging that his allies intended to slay her son.

“Now, for the first time, the main divide within the party is horizontal; that is, across generations. It pits Mnangagwa’s old guard of liberation war fighters (known popularly as Team Lacoste to reflect their leader’s nickname of Crocodile) against the so-called G-40, an insurgent group of younger politicians, who were born too late to take part in the independence struggle and have attached themselves to the first lady’s high-fashion coattails.”

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