After threats of sack, the President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, on Monday fired his Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa for gross misconduct.
The sack was announced by the Information Minister Simon Moyo.
Mnangagwa, a 75-year-old former intelligence chief, has been heavily-criticised by supporters of Mugabe’s wife, Grace, who has also been touted as a potential successor to her husband.
The 92-year-old Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, who is still at the verge of contesting in the 2018 general elections, said on Thursday in Harare that his party would choose a successor in the next election.
“The vice president has consistently and persistently exhibited traits of disloyalty, disrespect, deceitfulness and unreliability,” the Information minister Simon Khaya Moyo told reporters in Harare.
“It had become evident that his conduct in his discharge of his duties had become inconsistent with his official responsibilities.”
There has been a love lost between the VP and the wife of the President necessitating Grace, 52, calling Mnangagwa a ‘”coup plotter and a coward” on Sunday in a speech that exacerbated the tension that had already been brewing in the ruling Zanu-PF party.
Also, Mugabe had during a rally on Saturday publicly rebuked his deputy for the first time.
Mnangagwa was appointed vice-president in 2014, after he took over from Joice Muguru, who was axed after Grace launched a campaign accusing her of plotting to topple the president.
However, on October 6, Mugabe’s wife accused Mnangagwa of a dark past of clandestine plots, including planning to stage a coup around the time of Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980.
“In 1980, this person called Mnangagwa wanted to stage a coup. He wanted to wrestle power from the president. He was conspiring with the whites. That man is a ravisher,” Grace Mugabe reiterated.
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