Mugabe 'fighting for political life'

Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe is fighting for his political life in a behind-the-scenes power struggle within his own party, analysts said today.

They said the power struggle could oust him faster than street battles with a reinvigorated and determined political opposition.

While hard-line elements of Mugabe’s secret police and militant youth militia step up a brutal and bloody crackdown on government opponents, analysts said rival factions within the ruling ZANU-PF party were plotting to force the president to step down at the end of his term next year.

A key test could come as early as next week at a meeting of the ruling party Central Committee, when a faction could seek to block the president from running for another term next year.

University of Zimbabwe political analyst John Makumbe said rival factions supporting the former parliamentary speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa or Vice President Joyce Muguru, whose husband is a powerful ex-army commander, were confident they could prevent another Mugabe term.

“That is where the real trouble for Mugabe is. Both factions of ZANU-PF don’t want him to continue.

They are united on that, but they are not united on who to replace him with. That is when they take out their machetes and start cutting each other’s back,” Makumbe said in Harare.

“For Mugabe, the end is in sight. For him to believe otherwise is naïve,” added Makumbe.

Christopher Dell, the US ambassador to Zimbabwe, said the ruling party was in disarray, that tremendous pressures were building within the party because of the succession battle and that growing numbers within the party wanted Mugabe to step down.

“Mugabe is a very resourceful fellow. One has to give him certain grudging admiration for his political skills, I mean he’s managed to stay in power for 27 years, that’s no mean feat,” said Dell.

Mugabe complained in an interview broadcast on his state television last month that top officials were jockeying to succeed him. But, he announced: “There are no vacancies because I am still there.”

Dell said there were several possible scenarios in Zimbabwe “from the president unilaterally declaring a state of emergency and seizing power - dropping the facade of democracy – to somebody moving against him, to him being forced to stand down by his own party.”