HARARE, Zimbabwe ��Robert Mugabe has agreed to end his four-decade reign as the leader of Zimbabwe, according to three people familiar with the situation.
Mugabe, who at the age of 93 is the world's oldest national leader, made the decision after his ruling party told him to resign or face impeachment, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front's central committee decided at a meeting Sunday to fire Mugabe as its leader and ordered him to resign as president or they'll remove him, said Patrick Chinamasa, the party's secretary for legal affairs. Emmerson Mnangagwa, whom Mugabe dismissed as vice president this month, will be reinstated, take over as interim president and be Zanu-PF's presidential candidate in an election next year.
The party's decision to dump Mugabe came four days after the military placed him under house arrest and detained several of his closest allies �� a move triggered by
Mnangagwa, a former spy chief and defense minister, had battled for control of the ruling party against Grace Mugabe, the president's wife, and her fellow members of the so-called Generation-40 faction of mainly younger politicians who didn't fight in the liberation war against the white-minority regime of Rhodesia. Grace on occasion publicly criticized war veterans and the armed forces.
The party has now expelled Grace Mugabe and Phelekezela Mphoko, the nation's other vice president, from its ranks, along with several other senior officials.
Mnangagwa, 75, would inherit an economy in free-fall. An estimated 95 percent of the workforce is unemployed, public infrastructure is crumbling and as many as 3 million Zimbabweans have gone into exile. Many of the country's problems are rooted in Mugabe's support for the seizure of white-owned farms, which reduced agricultural production, export earnings and tax revenue.
While Mugabe was the clear winner of the first four post-independence elections, his victory in a violence-marred 2008 vote was disputed and his party lost parliamentary elections the next year.
Mugabe refused to step down and international mediators coaxed him into a power-sharing deal with the main opposition. That lasted until 2013 when Mugabe reclaimed outright power in an election the opposition said was neither free nor fair.
Mnangagwa was one of Mugabe's closest allies before they fell out, and played a pivotal role in keeping him in power. He was the chief of intelligence when Mugabe ordered the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade to crack down on rebels in the Matabeleland region in the 1980s.
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(Desmond Kumbuka contributed to this report. Cohen reported from Cape Town, South Africa.)
