by WorldTribune Staff, November 19, 2017
Robert Mugabe, the only head of state in Zimbabwe’s history as an independent nation, has agreed to step down and will be replaced by the vice president who he had sacked.
Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party removed Mugabe as its leader at a special meeting and replaced him with Vice President Emmerson “Crocodile” Mnangagwa, officials said.
Mugabe was an avowed Marxist when to assumed power which he steadfastly refused to relinquish during decades of despotic rule.
The 93-year-old Mugabe, the world’s oldest leader, broke down in tears before meeting army chiefs after being ousted by the Zanu-PF party on Nov. 19, reports said.
Mugabe had until noon local time on Nov. 20 to resign as president or impeachment proceedings would start, Zanu-PF said.
One of Mnangagwa’s top aides told MailOnline that “Mugabe is not a problem for us now. He has no power. We are divorcing him and he’s getting zero alimony.”
A Mugabe aide said that prior to meeting with army officials to discuss his exit Mugabe was “wailing profusely” and saying that he wished he could speak to his dead wife, Sally Mugabe, and his late son, Michael Nhamodzenyika, who died from cerebral malaria in 1966 at the age of three.
“He spends most of his time looking at an old photograph of Sally. It is terrible,” the aide said of Mugabe’s first wife, who died of kidney failure in 1992.
In 1996, Mugabe went on to marry his current wife, the widely unpopular “Gucci” Grace, who was also expelled from her role as head of the Zanu-PF Women’s League “forever.”
During the Zanu-PF party’s meeting, chairman Obert Mpofu told the committee that Mugabe’s wife “and close associates have taken advantage of his frail condition” to loot national resources.
The army threatened to let a mob lynch Mugabe if he didn’t stand down, MailOnline revealed on Nov. 18.
Following his resignation, Mugabe could live as an “elder statesman” in Zimbabwe, or travel to where he has property, including South Africa, Dubai or Singapore, the Daily Mail reported.
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