Mugabe faces impeachment, ignores resignation deadline

ZIMBABWE’S president, Robert Mugabe has ignored a Monday noon deadline to either step-down or face impeachment. Mugabe made clear in a televised speech Sunday that he did not intend to resign.

Zimbabwe’s ruling ZANU-PF will discuss the impeachment of President Robert Mugabe on Monday, its chief whip said, after a noon deadline expired for the 93-year-old to resign and bring the curtain down on nearly four decades in power.

Millions tuned in to radio and television Sunday expecting to celebrate the end of what has been 37 years of Mugabe’s autocratic rule.

They were bitterly disappointed – some to the point of tears – to hear Mugabe say he will preside over his ZANU-PF party congress next month.

He did not mention the word resign or appear to take the military intervention into the country’s political crisis seriously.

Impeachment could see Mugabe kicked out by a vote in parliament in under a day and would represent an ignominious end to the career of the “Grand Old Man” of African politics, who was once lauded across the continent as an anti-colonial hero.

Mugabe was reported to have said that “The operation…did not amount to a threat to our well-cherished constitutional order nor did it challenge my authority as head of state, not even as commander-in-chief.”

Although on paper, the process is relatively long-winded, involving a joint sitting of the Senate and National Assembly, then a nine-member committee of senators, then another joint sitting to confirm his dismissal with a two-thirds majority.

However, constitutional experts said ZANU-PF had the numbers and could push it through in as little as 24 hours.

The ruling party had issued the midday deadline at its meeting Sunday and also fired Mugabe as ZANU-PF chief — a party he co-founded — and installed ousted Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa as the new party leader.

Party whip Lovemore Matuke tells the Associated Press impeachment proceedings are a certainty and called Mugabe’s speech “surprising.”

“It is not in line with what we expected. We had understood that his resignation was coming to avoid the embarrassment of impeachment. The army is taking its own route, as politicians we are taking our own route, but the ultimate goal is to make sure he goes, which he should have done tonight,” Mutake said.

The freedom fighters who fought alongside Mugabe in the liberation struggle have called for protests and are demanding that Mugabe relinquish his stranglehold on the presidency.

“That speech has nothing to do with realities,” Chris Mutsvangwa, head of the influential war veterans’ association, told AFP news agency. “We will go for impeachment and we are calling people back to the streets.”

Mutsvangwa said he would like to see the military back off to let people and politics take care of Mugabe’s removal from office. Mutsvangwa said the military is bound to protect Mugabe, even though they placed him under house arrest because the president officially remains their commander-in-chief.

The war veterans’ association is going to court, Mutsvangwa said, to argue that Mugabe is derelict in his executive duty.”

Shaderick Guto, a professor emeritus of the University of South Africa, told VOA that Mugabe is “trying to play games” because he knows the army fears being ostracized by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union if it stages a coup. Neither organization condones the unconstitutional removal of an elected government.

Mugabe has been under house arrest since last week while negotiations are underway for his departure.

Zimbabwe has been in serious economic and political turmoil since the late 1990s.