“He’s old, he was getting senile. His faculties began to deteriorate and some people took advantage’ – Mutsvangwa

Members of Zanu-PF have arrived at the party’s headquarters in the capital where they are expected to tell President Robert Mugabe that he has officially been recalled.

The party’s special central committee is expected to meet and push through the resolution made by provincial structures to recall Mugabe as the leader of the party and therefore the president of the country. 

This comes after a tense week where the military took over key government buildings in the city, giving Mugabe an ultimatum to step down. 

On Saturday thousands of Zimbabweans took to the streets to demand Mugabe step down after nearly four decades as the president.  

Late in the afternoon, a large crowd was addressed by the military and informed that negotiations were still ongoing, but that things were on track. 

By Sunday morning, things in Harare started looking like normal, except for the large media contingent at Zanu-PF headquarters awaiting Mugabe’s arrival, a place where journalists aren’t usually welcomed. 

A large campaign poster, with Mugabe’s face on it, had been shredded, with ordinary Zimbabweans still optimistic that his time was up. 

One man outside the headquarters said he woke up to a new Zimbabwe and was hopeful that the country could be rebuilt after Mugabe’s presidency.

Christopher Mutsvangwa, the chairman of the Zimbabwe liberation movement, arrived at the Zanu-PF headquarters on Sunday morning saying Mugabe had until noon today to step down.

“From our point of view they have been having their negotiations for a week, he better give in to it now. If he doesn’t, we take over from where the defence force has left,” he said.

“[If that doesn’t happen] we want a team from the party, we want a team from the war veterans to go and tell him to march out. If he doesn’t, we bring back the crowd,” Mutsvangwa said.

“He’s old, he was getting senile. His faculties began to deteriorate and some people took advantage of that. We should have been more vigilant. The blame is someone on our side. He should have been long retired,” he said. 

“African coups, they have a habit of having a nasty ending, but this one got done in such a way… you are happy that the army actually corrected a situation and it was not actually a coup.” News24.com