A Strongman Nicknamed ‘Crocodile’ Is Poised to Replace Mugabe
Known as the "Crocodile," he once explained the nickname by saying: "It strikes at the appropriate time." Emmerson Mnangagwa, the vice president of Zimbabwe until he was fired last week, now stands to become its new leader, after the military took President Robert Mugabe into custody early Wednesday morning
and plunged the southern African nation into uncertainty.
The firing was widely seen as paving the way for Mr. Mugabe’s wife, Grace, to succeed her husband as president,
but Mrs. Mugabe — widely disliked for her volatile temper and expensive tastes — has almost no support among the military officers and intelligence operatives who maintain a tight grip on the country.
While in charge of the Central Intelligence Organization in the mid-1980s, Mr. Mnangagwa was accused of orchestrating a brutal campaign known as Gukurahundi — "the early rain
that washes away the chaff before the spring rain" — in which thousands of political opponents and civilians from the Ndebele ethnic group were killed, a claim that he has denied.
Victor Matemadanda said that He was born into politics,
In firing Mr. Mnangagwa, Mr. Mugabe — Zimbabwe’s leader since independence in 1980 and, at 93, the world’s oldest head of state —
might have finally overreached, singling out an erstwhile ally with liberation-war credentials and a deep power base of his own.
There is also fear about his association with some of the Mugabe era’s low points: Mr. Mnangagwa was accused of
orchestrating a crackdown in the 1980s in which thousands of members of the Ndebele ethnic group were killed.