Robert Mugabe has lost his grip on power and been replaced by his wife, Grace Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s opposition leader has claimed.
Morgan Tsvangirai said that the 91-year-old president’s wife is now effectively in charge after a “palace coup”, and that the government has been paralysed as members of the ruling party jockey for position.
Don’t mess with Grace Mugabe – she could be the next president of Zimbabwe
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“No one in government is thinking of solutions to the national challenges as everyone is preoccupied with issues of who will succeed this tired man steering the ship of state,” Tsvangirai was quoted by South Africa’s Mail and Guardian newspaper as saying.
Grace Mugabe has been an increasingly prominent presence on Zimbabwe’s political scene in recent months, taking up a key post in the ruling party last December and going around the country addressing rallies and handing out gifts.
Her aggressive statements against those she deems insufficiently loyal to her husband come at a time when Africa’s oldest leader is looking increasingly frail.
The famously austere Mugabe has long been in robust physical and mental condition, but several mishaps in recent months have sent tongues wagging.
Bodyguards had to rush to stop him falling as he stumbled while reaching out to shake hands with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the last week of October. A month earlier, he read the wrong speech during the opening of parliament without realising his error.
Mugabe is still expected to be endorsed as the ruling party Zanu-PF’s presidential candidate in 2018, when he will be 94.
But with the end of his rule inevitably drawing nearer, a furious behind-the-scenes succession battle is underway.
Local media have reported two competing camps forming around army chief Emmerson Mnangagwa and Grace Mugabe, despite president Mugabe’s warnings that the jockeying for power “threatens to split the party”.
Amid this battle, Tsvangirai’s claim that Robert Mugabe wife had “surreptitiously but willingly” assumed power appear designed to take advantage of the current rifts.
Will ‘DisGrace’ Mugabe become Zimbabwe’s first female president?
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Grace Mugabe has managed to rally a group of younger party members around her, dubbed by local media as “the G-40”, but she is generally unpopular with the wider public thanks to her lavish shopping trips overseas at a time when the country’s economy is struggling to recover from a devastating period of hyperinflation.
On Tuesday, Zimbabwe announced it would make the Chinese Yuan legal tender, as one of a basket of currencies that replaced Zimbabwe’s own dollar, which was abandoned in 2009 with inflation running at 500bn%.
“DisGrace”? Is that so? Hmmmm … :nerd
mama!! I will mek sure tune in because I want to hear the last of this
Same here!! This should be interesting!!
We soon hear him croak, while she’s away shopping for shoes 😀
Is either she got tired of his bloody hands, or him cut her spending and she poisoned him backside to where him madness starting to really unravel him diabolical mind.
She been a push up harself politically since she got better eno and to how mugabe heng on pan di seat it may be a plan between the two now that he is too old
Yes, Met. A keep it in the family movements. They are disgusting to the core!
A blood thirsty bitch at the helm; “birds of a feather flocks together”
Mugabe, being at his advanced age, needs to step down. Chances are, he fear losing his life if he were to become the ex-president. There is no way that his cerebral faculties are still art work–sufficient for him to rule a country that is.
Nepotism at work big time–seemingly, they are a divinely empowered to rule…