ZANU PF on Friday re-elected President Emmerson Mnangagwa (80), for another five-year term as president and first secretary.
Zimbabwe’s ruling party is holding its 7th National People’s Congress, which is its first the November 2017 military coup that overthrew the late Robert Mugabe.
Mnangagwa retained the ZANU PF presidency unopposed and is set to stand as the party’s presidential candidate in 2023 where he’s likely to be challenged by CCC leader Nelson Chamisa.
During the run-up to the congress, reports claimed that Mnangagwa’s deputy, Constantino Chiwenga, the retired army general who led the coup against Mugabe, would challenge for the presidency.
Ironically, it was Chiwenga who took to the podium on Friday at the HICC where the ZANU PF Congress is being held, to endorse Mnangagwa. Chiwenga said:
While this congress is supposed to be elective, the party structures have already clearly and thunderously endorsed Comrade Mnangagwa as the president and 1st Secretary as the sole candidate in the 2023 national elections. People have thus spoken. Let their will be obeyed.
Let us give President Mnangagwa another five years. I strongly believe that we are much better off as a party and country if God grants the president many more years. He has surpassed our expectations over a short space of time.
The congress went ahead while a legal challenge to Mnangagwa’s leadership Sybeth Msengezi, a ZANU PF youth activist, was before the courts.
Msengezi wants the 19 November 2017 extraordinary party meeting, which called for the removal of Mugabe, declared null and void.