Zimbabwe: Mugabe to Cling On Until 2010

Zimbabwe Independent (Harare)
ANALYSIS
May 5, 2006
Dumisani Muleya

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe's complex succession struggle took a dramatic twist this week with disclosures that he has given ministers orders to amend the constitution to move the presidential election to 2010 to secure a two-year extension to his hold on power.

Reliable official sources said Mugabe last month gave Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa, his point man on constitutional issues, and his Rural Housing counterpart Emmerson Mnangagwa, also Zanu PF's legal affairs secretary, a fresh mandate to change the constitution to delay the 2008 presidential poll until 2010 to allow him to hang onto office for a further two years.

"Mugabe has given Chinamasa the go-ahead to work on the plan with the assistance of Mnangagwa," a well-placed source said. "The two ministers are currently working on it. The idea now is for Mugabe to remain president until the next harmonised presidential and parliamentary elections in 2010."

An anonymous column in the government-controlled Herald, generally understood to be written by Mugabe's press secretary George Charamba, on Saturday suggested that Mugabe was not going anywhere in 2008. Its revelations confirmed information filtering through from other quarters.

Sources said Chinamasa and Mnangagwa were working on the plan which would see Mugabe in 2008 elected by both houses of parliament sitting as an electoral college -- as happened in 1987 when the executive presidency was introduced -- to continue until 2010 if his health permits.

Mugabe was first elected president in 1987 by both the lower and upper houses of parliament until 1990, after the amendment of the constitution. This followed the unity accord between Zanu PF and PF Zapu on December 22 1987 in the aftermath of civil strife in the south-western region of the country.

He was popularly elected president in 1990, the year the senate was abolished. Before that he had been prime minister from 1980 to 1987.

Mnangagwa yesterday referred queries on the issue to Chinamasa.

"Ask the Minister of Justice," he said. Chinamasa said he was not aware of the issue.

"I told you (two weeks ago) there is nothing like that. I still maintain that. Nothing has changed," he said. "I'm also not aware that the secretary for legal affairs (Mnangagwa) has been told to work on that."

Sources said the divisive succession plan -- initially meant to benefit Vice-President Joice Mujuru -- might fuel infighting in Zanu PF where two factions, which include Mujuru and Mnangagwa on rival sides, are locked in an increasingly bitter power struggle.

Mujuru was expected to become the Zanu PF leader when Mugabe steps down during the 2009 party congress. In 2010 she would then become the party candidate in the presidential poll, but things seem to have changed.

While Mugabe has hinted in the press he might retire in 2008 and Mujuru takes over, details obtained this week show Mugabe was in fact contemplating clinging onto power until 2010 when the presidential and parliamentary elections would be held simultaneously under a new system in which there would be only two terms of office for an elected president.

The move is understood to have sent shock waves through the Zanu PF camp led by retired army commander Solomon Mujuru who now fear Mugabe might scuttle their plan to shoe in Joice Mujuru as he did with Mnanagwa in 2004 in the run-up to the party congress.

It has now emerged that Mugabe initially wanted Mnangagwa to come in as vice-president under the Tsholotsho Declaration initiative but changed his mind later to back Mujuru when he felt threatened by the proposal.

Insiders say Mugabe is playing Machiavellian politics by deploying Chinamasa and Mnangagwa to handle the issue when he knows those associated with the Tsholotsho group might otherwise have opposed the move because of the perception it was meant for Mujuru's ascent.

Although Mnangagwa's faction is said to have received the news of the latest constitutional proposal with guarded optimism, some were beginning to entertain the idea that their leader might yet bounce back in the succession battle which, if Mugabe stays on until 2010, could once again become an open race.

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