Tendai Biti predicts a coup in Zimbabwe

Tendai Biti, the former Finance Minister in the Zimbabwe government of national unity, on Thursday predicted that the current economic turmoil will topple President Robert Mugabe's regime by 2016 and a military coup which has remained a remote possibility under Mugabe could emerge.

Speaking during a SAPES Trust dialogue forum in Harare, the MDC Renewal Team's leader said it was near impossible for the veteran leader to manage the current economic turmoil beyond the next four months.

"Things can't go on as they are and if we think we are in trouble now, I can't see the mitigation of the situation in the next four months come December of 2015," Biti said.

"I think that in 2016, you will actually see an actual collapse of the government, reflected by its failure to honour many obligations including the public service wage bill."

Biti however, ruled out an immediate return to normalcy in a post-Mugabe period, adding the 91-year-old's likely successors were "vultures" with an equally insatiable appetite to plunder.

Biti predicted that a military coup which has remained a remote possibility under Mugabe could emerge.

"I see a continuation of the dangerous vulture scenario but with dangerous tendencies of an implosion which can take the form of a military coup," he said.