Mnangagwa to finish off Mugabe's tenure - Reports

Vice President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is going to finish off President Robert Mugabe's term in office, amid top secret disclosures that, a cross-section of International players are reportedly embracing and endorsing Mnangagwa, behind the curtains to bring economic stimulus to Harare, Spotlight Zimbabwe, can reveal.

Mugabe has denied that he will step aside for anyone in Zanu PF, citing in his recent televised 92 birthday remarks, that he did not win a fresh mandate in 2013, only to pave power for someone else before 2018.

"Why successor? I am still there," Mugabe told the State broadcaster ZBC TV. "Why do you want a successor? I did not say I was a candidate to retire."

The veteran leader plans to contest the 2018 polls aged 94, and seeking his last five-year term under the new constitution, that would see him through to 99.

However, according to two diplomatic sources who spoke to Spotlight Zimbabwe in the capital this week, Mugabe is now all but in the eleventh hour of his presidency, as Western capitals now view Mnangagwa as a "pragmatic politician" ready to undertake broad-based reforms, appealing to the Bretton Woods and foreign investors.

"Some leaders in Brussels, have realised that Zimbabwe cannot wait until 2018 to fix her economy," one of the envoys said. "Therefore are open to the idea of giving Mnangagwa a shot, although this will irritate the opposition. They are supporting moves that he (Mnangagwa) becomes caretaker president before Mugabe's term ends, thus giving him a golden opportunity to raise credit for the economy and crystallise the possibility of winning power ultimately in 2018, but Mugabe has to be convinced to go, and from the look of things he appears to be yielding in private."

Further confidential details supplied to this publication also reveal, that Canadian and Australian mining companies, are keen to move into Zimbabwe for big business in diamond and uranium mining, but Harare must first cobble friendly laws, under a reformed administration willing to re-think the country's controversial indigenization legislation, calling for local blacks to claim a mandatory 51% stake in equity, in all foreign firms across the economy.

Government has given April 1, as a final deadline for full compliance with it's indigenisation and economic empowerment regime, failure which shall result in firms having their operating licenses revoked.

"Mnangagwa himself and some senior security officials, are reported to have interests in mining and therefore know what is required to get things back on track," another envoy said. "The potential of this country cannot remain subdued forever, that is why you must not be surprised to see unusual political alliances taking shape."

The diplomats said it should not come as a surprise, if Mnangagwa and his predecessor, Zimbabwe People First (ZPF) leader, Joice Mujuru, start working together for the good of the country.

Spotlight Zimbabwe, has however established and since reported that Mujuru has already sealed a pact to form a coalition government with MDC-T leader and former prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai.

Revelations of Mugabe's growing likelihood of stepping down this year, come in the midst of war veterans openly encouraging him, to call it a day, while they want his other deputy, Phelekezela Mphoko, ousted for allegedly fanning factionalism and tribalism in Zanu PF. Ruling party youths have had to come to the nonagenarian's defence, and plan to stage a million man march next month to support Mugabe.

Mnangagwa we have also gathered, is now having formidable support from the security establishment, with Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) Commander, General Constantine Chiwenga, behind him.

Government insiders, who spoke to Spotlight Zimbabwe this month, see Chiwenga and Mnangagwa as having connived, with fallen former Ethiopian dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam now exiled in Zimbabwe after receiving asylum in 1991, to leverage the military and its influence in drawing first blood once and for all in Zanu PF's factional wars to take over from Mugabe, now pitting deadly plots between themselves and Grace Mugabe's so called Generation 40 (G40) confederacy.

This publication first reported on 18 March 2016, that Chiwenga is reportedly on the verge on becoming the next vice president of Zimbabwe, as part of a grand political plan which has been in the pipeline since 2008, and a direct brainchild of Mengistu, who is handsomely paid for work as national security consultant of the military.

Although it is not clear who the first vice president in the country is, Mnangagwa has been referred to as such by many government functionaries despite protest by Mphoko, thus favoured by the new Constitution's Sections 101(1) and 100(1) to take over as president. The Sections read respectively as thus below:

Section 101(1)
"If the President dies, resigns or is removed from office – the first Vice-President assumes office as President until the expiry of the former President's term of office;…"

Section 100(1)
"Whenever the President is absent from Zimbabwe or is unable to exercise his or her official functions through illness or any other cause, those functions must be assumed and exercised—
(a)by the first Vice-President;.."

Mugabe might be forced to step down on health grounds and advanced aged, our sources said.

Prominent opposition MDC-T legislator, Eddie Cross, has also made the startling disclosure, that Mnangagwa is a step away from becoming president, adding that Zimbabwe has already gone through a bloodless coup since late 2014.

Cross made the remarks, during an interview in February with the Kenya Citizen TV ( see video below starting from 17:08 – 19:47).

"We've been through a political coup in the last six months," said Cross during the breakfast interview in Kenya. "Mujuru was the vice president for 10 years, and was clearly the most popular politician in Zanu. In fact we in the opposition, in the MDC regarded Mujuru as our only real opposition in a democratic sense. We feared that she would become candidate for Zanu, because she held some popular sway in the country. We always wanted Mugabe to be the candidate against us because he's least popular, and has no pull anymore."

"But a man called Mnangagwa……has made a determined bid for power, and as part of that bid, the first thing he had to do was to destroy Mujuru, which he did. We call him the crocodile, and you know if a crocodile is threatened, he goes underwater you don't see him. The next time you see him it's too late. Well when Mujuru saw the crocodile coming it was too late, and she has been eliminated.

"………..The reality is that Mnangagwa has become senior vice president, and therefore constitutionally, and politically he will assume the presidency, should the president die or be incapacitated. I think what's happening right now, is that Mugabe is handing authority to run the state, not to take over the presidency, but to run the state operationally to Mnangagwa."