HARARE – President Emmerson Mnangagwa will be removed by a coup before he finishes his first term in 2023 political analysts loyal to the opposition have said.
The analysts, according to a local publication were commenting on the ongoing case against outspoken opposition MP Job Sikhala who is accused of inciting Zimbabweans to overthrow the government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
In an a interview with this reporter South African based analyst and opposition supporter Fortune Mlalazi said Mnangagwa and ailing Vice President Constantino Chiwenga had set a precedence that power can be taken outside electoral means.
” Chiwenga nd Mnangagwa showed us that you can be able to remove a sitting President using brute force and with utter disregard of electoral processes. You will remember my brother that when Emmerson was fired from government he wrote a letter threatening to come back and forcefully take over power from Mugabe in a few weeks. His statements are similar to the ones uttered by Sikhala.
“One exciting factor is that the courts endorsed the removal of President Mugabe through a bloody coup that displaced people and claimed the lives of officials like CIO Boss Peter Munetsi. Sikhala is right when he says Mnangagwa will be overthrown because in their nature coups beget other coups.
“As Tendai Biti said recently all the ingredients of another coup are in place, the writing is on the wall we are just waiting for the Sarajevo moment only.”
Constitutional lawyer Shephard Dube said Mnangagwa may suffer worse scenario than that which happened to Mugabe.
“The current President is definitely on his way out,” Dube said. “What he must brace himself for is a worse treatment than that which happened to Mugabe. He is a hated person in the Southern region because of being the hammer man during Gukurahundi. His hands drip raw fresh Zimbabwean blood form the murders of August 2018 and January 2019. His fate is sealed. Once he is ousted from power he will taste the bitter pill that he has been feeding Zimbabweans with.”
Last week the MDC Vice President Tendai Biti said Zimbabwe is “ripe for another coup”, that could depose President Emmerson Mnangagwa barely two years after he wrestled power from long time ruler Robert Mugabe with the assistance of the military in 2017.
Biti was speaking at a panel discussion hosted by local think-tank, Southern African Political and Economic Series (Sapes) Trust on Thursday.
“We need a national transitional authority, we need to have a soft landing for our country. If we do not do that, we are heading for an implosion, an Armageddon.
“An Armageddon, in the form of another military coup and this is a point which I keep on seeing, that the signs are there just as they were obvious in 2017,” said the Harare East legislator.
Mugabe was pushed out by the army after firing then Vice President Mnangagwa as an internal power struggle within Zanu PF boiled over, amid claims the once powerful State leader was setting up his wife for takeover.
Biti said he had warned about the 2017 coup although he was not spot on about the days.
“If you look at some of the things we wrote, we were arguing as far back as 2013 that there will be a coup in this country. Ofcourse we could not predict 14, 15, 16 November but all the material conditions of another coup are in existence in Zimbabwe at the moment,” said Biti.
“Remember if you study history, there is no coup which is a solitary coup, a coup always comes with a twin brother or multiple brothers.”
Since taking charge and winning controversial elections last year, Mnangagwa has watched the country’s economic fortunes nosedive with deadly protests twice in the past year alone in which over 20 people were gunned down by the army.
Mnangagwa announced a raft of austerity measures that have left citizens on the brink with threats of mass protests looming large.
To avert a crisis, Biti said Zimbabwe needed a quick solution.
“We need to democratically coup-proof our country by finding a democratic solution to our problems and avoid a vacuum that makes military intervention inevitable,” the MDC vice president said.
