“He was told to make a choice between sitting on a hot stove or jump out of the window. He chose to jump and now he is disabled. He could have refused both options but I guess he was afraid,” Mugabe said at a rally in Bindura town on Sept. 9.
During the remarks, Mnangagwa and his wife sat stone-faced on the dais. And that wasn’t all. Grace Mugabe then piled on, warning Mnangagwa that he might face a similar fate to that of Mujuru, who was also accused of plotting to oust the president.
“I am begging the VP to stop this. I once warned Mujuru and she thought I was joking. Where is she now?” the first lady thundered.
The other vice president, Phelekezela Mphoko, has joined in criticism of his colleague, even though he is not considered a front-runner to succeed Mugabe because he lacks a strong political base.
Zimbabwe’s constitution says that if the president dies, resigns or is removed from office, the vice president who last stood in as acting president takes over for 90 days, following which the ruling party must appoint a person who takes over until the expiry of the former president’s term. Mnangagwa was acting president during Mugabe’s trip to the United Nations last month, while Mphoko has previously assumed the role.
Some analysts point to Sekeramayi, the low-key defense minister, as a possible successor. A medical doctor, Sekeramayi appears acceptable to those wary of Mnangagwa, who was in charge of state security when Mugabe unleashed a North Korean-trained brigade to crush dissent in western Zimbabwe in the 1980s. Sekeremayi’s name was first brought to the fore by Jonathan Moyo, an ally of Grace Mugabe and a critic of a faction associated with Mnangagwa.
At the Bindura rally, Mugabe said he invited Mnangagwa and Sekeremayi to join the independence war at around the same time, making neither of them senior to the other. His wife said Mugabe summoned Sekeremayi when he suffered diarrhea and thought he was dying; she didn’t say when that happened.
“The first family is using the rallies to reconstruct Mnangagwa’s image from a war hero to a careless, cruel and divisive individual, unfit to take over. At the same time, he is painting Sekeremayi as equal to Mnangagwa in terms of seniority in the party,” said Alex Rusero, an analyst based in Harare, the Zimbabwean capital. He speculated: “All this is to cast Sekeremayi as the chosen one.”
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