Zimbabwe takes its next step into the post-Mugabe era soon, when its new
President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, names two vice presidents - appointments
that will signal whether he is breaking with the country’s old guard.
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.
Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa arrives to chair ZANU PF’s Politburo meeting in Harare, yesterday.