Mugabe pulls the strings in Zimbabwe's succession battle

LONDON - In August, he stood shoulder to shoulder in Beijing with President Xi Jinping of China. Then, in September, he addressed the United Nations to condemn "the evil machinations of Western countries" seeking his overthrow. And just this month, he eulogized a neighbor and political ally at the state funeral of President Michael Chilufya Sata of Zambia, the NYTimes report.

Hemmed in by travel restrictions in the West, except for journeys to international gatherings, and reviled by many governments for his record on human rights, President Robert G. Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Africa's oldest leader at 90, still struts a somewhat diminished stage as head of state, one of a shrinking band of the continent's longstanding rulers and political survivors.

But back home, he is presiding over - and possibly choreographing - an increasingly fierce internal scramble for the rewards of high office.

The land is seething with intimations of conspiracy and counterconspiracy. In recent days, a state-run newspaper reported that his vice president, Joice Mujuru, 59, was linked to a plot to assassinate him, a charge she vigorously denied. Then his wife, Grace Mugabe, 49, said the vice president planned to kill her, too, intensifying the battle for control of the country after Mr. Mugabe dies.

There has been talk of bugged conversations and secret videos showing the vice president in unseemly attire; there have been whisperings of hit men hired in Israel and South Africa; and there have been purges of high officials that are likely to continue until Mr. Mugabe's dominant party, Zanu-PF, holds an elective congress in early December that will determine his potential successor and other key posts.

"It would take a person like William Shakespeare to write a meaningful script on this episode," Moses Chamboko, a pro-democracy advocate, said in a column this week.

The drama is being played out at the heart of a region facing political challenges — from a transition to new elections in Zambia to the north, to what Allister Sparks, a veteran columnist and author, called a "dangerous convergence of both a political and an economic crisis" in South Africa to the south.

Zimbabwe's splintered and ineffectual opposition parties "have become irrelevant," Wilf Mbanga, editor of The Zimbabwean newspaper, said in a telephone interview. "The fight is within Zanu-PF."

And, in a closely controlled autocracy where Mr. Mugabe controls the fonts of patronage, he added, "If you lose power in Zanu-PF, you lose access to wealth, farms, all the inputs from the government."

Mr. Mugabe has maintained his grip on the nation through successive and often disputed elections since Zimbabwe achieved independence from Britain in 1980, surviving as much through political guile as through oppression.

But the origins — and the style — of the latest scramble recall earlier days, before independence, when factional fighting among black nationalists led to leaders being ousted or assassinated, or dying in mysterious car wrecks.

For many, the armed struggle during the 1970s to end white minority rule became the touchstone of political legitimacy. That was the era when Ms. Mujuru, a fighter with the nom de guerre Teurai Ropa, or Spill Blood, met her husband, Solomon Mujuru, known then as Rex Nhongo.

Both established their credentials. She was said to have brought down a military helicopter with a machine gun. He became a key commander in ZANLA, as Mr. Mugabe's guerrilla army was known. As a power broker along with the most senior commander, Josiah Tongogara, he helped ensure that guerrilla fighters in the bush accepted Mr. Mugabe as their political leader — a major step toward the leadership of an independent Zimbabwe.

After the defeat of white rule, Mr. Mujuru rose to the rank of general while Ms. Mujuru joined the cabinet as its youngest member in the first post-independence government.

In 2004, after political maneuvers that bear a striking resemblance to those of the past few weeks, she became vice president. Many said she had become the heir apparent.

But in 2011, her husband died in a fire at their home that many of her supporters say was suspicious. In a tangle of secretive, shady business deals, old alliances and shifting allegiances that bind Zimbabwe's Machiavellian elite, Ms. Mujuru lost a degree of political protection in a long-running contest with another veteran of the liberation struggle, Emmerson Mnangagwa, a former spymaster and her archrival.

Now, enter Ms. Mugabe, the president's former secretary and second wife. As first lady, she has acquired such a reputation for high-end purchases in luxury stores during overseas travel that critics call her the "first shopper."

Mr. Mugabe has proved remarkably durable, celebrating his 90th birthday in February and seeming to defy alarms about his health with defiant displays of longevity. Yet his adversaries never cease to foretell his demise, heightening the stakes surrounding the Zanu-PF congress in December that will parcel out positions of influence in the party - and thus wealth - potentially for years to come.

To some, Mr. Mugabe has seemed to groom his wife for high office, promoting her within the Zanu-PF Women's League in what his critics have depicted as, perhaps, the stirrings of a dynasty.

Ms. Mugabe, indeed, has taken her political ambitions a step further, tilting vituperatively against Ms. Mujuru at a series of public rallies, accusing her of corruption and perfidy, and hinting at her own higher aspirations.

"Why shouldn't I be president?" Ms. Mugabe asked.

As if to answer her own question, Ms. Mugabe has burnished her qualifications with a rapidly acquired doctorate from the University of Zimbabwe, of which her husband is chancellor. Her degree matched a similar academic achievement by Ms. Mujuru. President Mugabe conferred the awards on both red-robed women at the same graduation ceremony in September.

State-run newspapers, moreover, have amplified Ms. Mugabe's attacks on the vice president, prompting Ms. Mujuru on Sunday to deliver an extraordinary riposte.

"I deny any and all the allegations of treason, corruption, incompetence and misuse of public office being routinely made against me," Ms. Mujuru said. "I stand ready to defend myself."

The fevered mood has nonetheless built in intensity.

According to Mr. Mbanga, the editor of The Zimbabwean, a slew of powerful provincial party leaders have been purged.

At a meeting of the Zanu-PF leadership this month, the party spokesman, Rugare Gumbo, was suspended, and the once-powerful head of an organization grouping liberation war veterans, Jabulani Sibanda, was expelled. "It was the president himself who led the charges," Mr. Gumbo was quoted as saying.

The party congress is widely expected to endorse Mr. Mugabe as the leader of Zanu-PF and thus as its choice for president. But the real fight is over the vice presidency, a position that could offer a springboard to potential successors.

At present, the main combatants appear to be Ms. Mujuru and Mr. Mnangagwa, 76, a close lieutenant of Mr. Mugabe during the liberation war and a seasoned political survivor who lost to Ms. Mujuru in the contest for the vice presidency a decade ago, though he now seems to have the support of Ms. Mugabe.

Whatever the outcome, there are those, like Mr. Chamboko, the pro-democracy advocate, who believe, that "Zanu-PF will never be the same again."

"The seeds of hatred, mistrust, suspicion and betrayal have been planted," he added. "It is just a matter of time before Zanu-PF starts harvesting bitter fruit."

But, from another perspective, Mr. Mugabe has long succeeded in playing rival factions against one another to protect his own position. These days, The Economist wrote, he "looks and sounds in fine form for his age. Regardless of who will be elevated or demoted, he has shown himself to be the ringmaster."

A version of this article appears in print on November 22, 2014, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: In Succession Battle, Mugabe Pulls the Strings.