Mugabe’s wife rises to pinnacle of power in Zimbabwe

Bloomberg

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe fired a vice president who his wife Grace accused of plotting against her husband for the second time in three years, highlighting the first lady’s rise to the pinnacle of power in the southern African nation.
The dramatic dismissal of Emmerson Mnangagwa on Monday came a day after Grace Mugabe publicly accused the former spy chief of plotting against the president. In 2014, similar allegations led to the ouster of Mugabe’s then deputy, Joice Mujuru, who like Mnangagwa fought in the liberation war against the white-minority regime of Rhodesia.
“It’s clear that Grace Mugabe is calling the shots,” said Alex Magaisa, a Zimbabwean law lecturer who is based in the UK and hel-ped design Zimbabwe’s 2013 constitution. “No other person has wielded as much public power as Grace has, apart from her husb-and. She is certainly the most powerful person in Zimbabwe at the moment after Mugabe.”
Mnangagwa’s firing marks a decisive break by Mugabe with allies who fought in the independence war and propelled him to power in 1980 as well as a victory for Grace’s Generation-40 faction of younger members of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front. It comes amid growing tensions in the ruling party before elections next year when it may face a seven-party opposition alliance that’s capitalizing on public discord over cash shortages, crumbling infrastructure and a collapse in government services.
“We are not surprised with
what happened yesterday,” Victor Matemadanda, secretary-general of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association, said by phone from Harare, the capital, on Tuesday. “It is the work of our erstwhile enemies since they have an agenda to remove every person who has liberation-war credentials. Those who have become dear to the dear leader are calling the shots, but as war veterans we are not going to be defeated.”
GRACE READY
While Mugabe is the party’s candidate for the elections,
Grace, the president’s former secretary whom he wed in 1996 after the death of his first wife, said on Sunday that she’s ready to succeed him.
Her announcement came as Zanu-PF is planning to amend its constitution at a congress next month to ensure that a woman is appointed to its top body, known as the presidium.
It currently comprises the president, Mnangagwa and Zimbabwe’s other vice president, Phelekezela Mphoko.
Nicknamed “Gucci Grace” in Zimbabwe for her extravagant lifestyle, her lawyers filed suit last month in the High Court against a Lebanese national
over his purported failure to supply a $1.35 million ring she’d ordered for her wedding anniversary. In August, neighboring South Africa granted her diplomatic immunity after she was accused of assaulting a woman in a Johannesburg hotel with an electric extension cord in a dispute involving her sons.
Grace has already picked up support from Zanu-PF’s youth league to take Mnangagwa’s place as vice president.
For Mnangagwa, the dismissal marks a stunning downfall for a leading candidate to succeed Mugabe and who’s been his comrade for the past 50 years during the armed struggle against Rhodesia and after independence.