Mnangagwa, whose sacking as vice-president triggered the removal of Robert Mugabe, made no comments to the media yesterday before the first meeting of the ruling ZANU-PF party’s bosses.
Party spokesman Simon Khaya-Moyo has said he will choose his deputies either this week or later.
Khaya-Moyo told reporters after the meeting that Mnangagwa assured senior party officials they would serve their full terms, comments that allayed concerns of a purge of the G40 faction loyal to Mugabe and his wife, Grace.
Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko, who was considered an ally of the G40, has already been sacked from the party and his post, and some Mnangagwa supporters have called for unspecified action against G40.
But the president has urged citizens not to undertake any form of “vengeful retribution”.
Party and government officials have refused to comment on speculation in privately owned newspapers and on social media that Mnangagwa is likely to make military chief General Constantine Chiwenga one of his deputies, as a reward for spearheading the de facto coup that ended Mugabe’s rule.
The new president has been criticised by some Zimbabweans and opposition parties for appointing Air Marshall Perrance Shiri as lands, agriculture and rural resettlement minister and Major-General Sibusiso Moyo as foreign and international trade minister, rather than bringing in younger candidates less associated with the Mugabe era.
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