Mnangagwa Fears The Hanging Sword
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s plan to stay in power beyond his 2028 constitutional limit to 2030 is unravelling – collapsing – as Vice President Constantino Chiwenga breathes on his neck, a senior Zanu PF official in the Top Four told The NewsHawks this evening.
With Chiwenga wielding the sword of damocles over Mnangagwa’s head, denoting constant and imminent danger, the President privately told Chiwenga during the Zanu PF Bulawayo annual conference in Bulawayo he will not extend his rule.
Mnangagwa publicly says he will not cling to power because he is a “constitutionalist”, but allows his political allies and supporters to campaign for him to stay on.
Last week, The President and his backers secured a Zanu PF conference resolution to hang onto power and amend the constitution for him to extend his reign to 2030, although Patrick Chinamasa, party legal affairs secretary, said Mnangagwa will have to give express approval for that to be implemented.
Chinamasa said the resolution is impossible to implement if Mnangagwa does not approve, indicating it faced Mount Everest in the form of two constitutional referenda to execute.
However, Mnangagwa is mainly anxious about what happens the day after retirement given a grisly record of abuse of office, human rights abuses and corruption under his watch – the past catching up with him, tje official says.
Mnangagwa was the enforcer of the late former president Robert Mugabe’s rule and now under his own administration.
Chiwenga and his military-backed faction are currently reminding Mnangagwa and his cabal how they came to power – through a military – and that they may go out through the same door if they persist with their political maneuvring for an extended stay in power or to decide to field a rival candidate to Chiwenga in the elective 2027 congress.
