{"id":618,"date":"2017-11-21T17:44:17","date_gmt":"2017-11-21T17:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/2017\/11\/21\/president-mugabe-has-resigned-after-37-years-in-power\/"},"modified":"2017-11-21T17:44:17","modified_gmt":"2017-11-21T17:44:17","slug":"president-mugabe-has-resigned-after-37-years-in-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/president-mugabe-has-resigned-after-37-years-in-power\/","title":{"rendered":"President Mugabe has resigned after 37 years in power"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After\u00a0Robert\u00a0Mugabe’s resignation as president of Zimbabwe, his former deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa, whose sacking led to the autocrat’s downfall, seems likely to be the next head of state.<\/p>\n

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On Sunday, Mnangagwa was named president of the ruling ZANU-PF party in place of\u00a0Mugabe.That put him one step away from the top job as\u00a0Mugabe\u00a0was told to quit or be forced from office.<\/p>\n

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Nicknamed “Ngwena” (The Crocodile) because of his fearsome power and ruthlessness, the 75-year-old Mnangagwa had appeared to have been outfoxed by\u00a0Mugabe’s wife, Grace.<\/p>\n

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The first lady, who is 41 years younger than her husband, lobbied the veteran head of state to ditch his vice president, a long-serving lieutenant, to further her own political ambitions.<\/p>\n

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But Mnangagwa has close ties with the military, which was alarmed at Grace’s rise, and the generals intervened.<\/p>\n

It was the climax of a long feud between Grace and\u00a0Mugabe’s deputy to be in pole position to replace the ailing leader when he died or retired.Mnangagwa – a long-time party loyalist and hardliner who, say some, could prove as authoritarian as\u00a0Mugabe\u00a0– initially fled to South Africa after his sacking.<\/p>\n

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But the dramatic seizure of power by the military returned him to centre-stage.In the early days after independence from Britain in 1980,\u00a0Mugabe\u00a0made Mnangagwa, who was then a young trainee lawyer, minister for national security.<\/p>\n

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Mnangagwa thereafter occupied a host of cabinet positions – but relations between him and his political mentor were not always cosy, and the younger man was no stranger to presidential purges.<\/p>\n

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In 2004 he lost his post as the secretary for administration in the party after being accused of openly angling for the post of vice president.<\/p>\n

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Political comeback<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 2008 elections, when he was made\u00a0Mugabe’s chief election agent, changed Mnangagwa’s fortunes.<\/p>\n

Mugabe\u00a0lost the first round vote, and Mnangagwa allegedly supervised the wave of violence and intimidation that forced the opposition to pull out of the run-off vote.<\/p>\n

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In the same year Mnangagwa took over as head of the Joint Operations Command, a committee of security chiefs which had been accused by rights groups of organising violent campaigns to crush dissent.<\/p>\n

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He was targeted by EU and US sanctions imposed on\u00a0Mugabe\u00a0and his close allies over the elections and ensuing violence, but was promptly handed control of the powerful defence ministry.<\/p>\n

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Born in the southwestern Zvishavane district on September 15, 1942, Mnangagwa completed his early education in Zimbabwe before his family relocated to neighbouring Zambia.<\/p>\n

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His grandfather was a traditional leader and his father a political agitator for the repeal of colonial laws that disadvantaged blacks.<\/p>\n

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In 1966, Mnangagwa joined the struggle for independence from Britain, becoming one of the young combatants who helped direct the war after undergoing training in China and Egypt.<\/p>\n

He was arrested and sentenced to death but his sentence was later commuted to 10 years in prison because of his young age.<\/p>\n

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After independence in 1980, he directed a brutal crackdown on opposition supporters that claimed thousands of lives in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces.<\/p>\n

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The Gukurahundi massacres remain the biggest scar on his reputation among many Zimbabweans.<\/p>\n

He once remarked that he had been taught to “destroy and kill” – although he later claimed to be a born-again Christian.<\/p>\n

– AFP<\/p>\n

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\u00a0 After\u00a0Robert\u00a0Mugabe’s resignation as president of Zimbabwe, his former deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa, whose sacking led…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amagep.co.za\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}