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Zimbabwe President Mugabe expelled from party

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Update: 2017-11-19 07:35:17
Zimbabwe President Mugabe expelled from party

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was dismissed as leader of that country’s ruling ZANU-PF party on Sunday (November 19) in a move to force a peaceful end to his 37 years in power following a de facto military coup.

It has been reported that Mugabe was replaced by Emmerson Mnangagwa, the country's vice president who was sacked earlier this month.

"Mugabe has been expelled, Mnangagwa is our new leader," one of the party delegates told media.

Earlier, the head of Zimbabwe's powerful liberation war veterans said that the ZANU-PF party will also remove Robert Mugabe's wife Grace as as head of the ZANU-PF Women's League.

A party source told Reuters that Ms Mugabe has also been expelled from the party.

Speaking on his way into the meeting, Mutsvangwa told media that Mr Mugabe was running out of time to negotiate his departure and should leave the country while he could.

"We are going all the way," he said. "He's trying to bargain for a dignified exit but he should just smell the coffee and gap it."

The former state security chief, known as "The Crocodile" is thought to be in line to head an interim post-Mugabe unity government that will focus on rebuilding ties with the outside world and stabilising an economy in freefall.

State television said late last Friday that Mugabe, who has so far resisted pressure to quit, would meet military commanders who seized power in a de facto coup four days ago.

He will also meet a Catholic priest who has been mediating between the two sides.

Meanwhile, the influential youth league of the ZANU-PF party has called for Mr Mugabe to leave office and for Grace to be thrown out of the party, piling further pressure on the veteran leader.

The ZANU-PF Youth League has been fiercely loyal to Mugabe, 93, but following the military takeover last week, it said he should step down "so that he can rest as the elderly statesman he is."

Yesterday, thousands of Zimbabweans celebrated the expected fall of Mugabe.

They marched towards his residence in the capital Harare, television pictures showed.

Soldiers had earlier prevented people from marching on the residence of the embattled leader.

Demonstrators had staged a sit-down protest on the road after being halted by troops around 200 metres from the gates to the complex.

Hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets of the capital singing, dancing and hugging soldiers in an outpouring of elation as Mr Mugabe's rule comes to an end.

Men, women and children ran alongside the armoured cars and troops that stepped in this week to oust the only ruler Zimbabwe has known since independence in 1980.

Mugabe's stunning downfall in just four days is likely to send shock waves across Africa, where a number of entrenched strongmen, from Uganda's Yoweri Museveni to Democratic Republic of Congo's Joseph Kabila, are facing mounting pressure to quit.

BDST: 1830 HRS, NOV 19, 2017
EHJ

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