President Robert Mugabe has stunned Zimbabwe on Sunday by making no mention of resignation in a television address, defying his own ZANU-PF party, which had sacked him hours earlier, and hundreds of thousands of protesters who had already hailed his downfall.
Two sources – one a senior member of the government, the other familiar with talks with leaders of the military – had told Reuters Mugabe would announce his resignation to the nation after ZANU-PF dismissed him as its leader in a move precipitated by an army takeover four days earlier.
But in the speech from his State House office, sitting alongside a row of generals, Mugabe acknowledged criticisms from ZANU-PF, the military and the public but made no mention of his own position.
Instead, he said the events of the week were not “a challenge to my authority as head of state and government”, and pledged to preside over the congress scheduled for next month.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was dumbstruck.
“I am baffled. It’s not just me, it’s the whole nation. He’s playing a game,” he told Reuters. “He is trying to manipulate everyone. He has let the whole nation down.”
ZANU-PF had given the 93-year-old, who has led his country since independence in 1980, less than 24 hours to quit as head of state or face impeachment, an attempt to secure a peaceful end to his tenure after a de facto military coup.
Chris Mutsvangwa, the leader of the liberation war veterans who have been spearheading an 18-month campaign to oust Mugabe, said plans to impeach him in parliament, which next sits on Tuesday, would now go ahead, and that there would be mass protests on Wednesday.
He also implied that Mugabe, who spoke with a firm voice but occasionally lost his way in his script during the 20-minute address, was not aware of what had happened just hours earlier.
“BLIND OR DEAF”
“Either somebody within ZANU-PF didn’t tell him what had happened within his own party, so he went and addressed that meeting oblivious, or (he was) blind or deaf to what his party has told him,” Mutsvangwa said.
ZANU-PF’s central committee had earlier named Emmerson Mnangagwa as its new leader. It was Mugabe’s sacking of Mnangagwa as his vice-president – to pave the way for his wife Grace to succeed him – that triggered the army’s intervention.
On Saturday, hundreds of thousands had taken to the streets of the capital Harare to celebrate Mugabe’s expected downfall and hail a new era for their country.
