Zanu PF Women’s League endorses Mnangagwa’s bid for third term as president

The women’s league of Zimbabwe’s ruling party, Zanu PF, has endorsed the country’s president Emmerson Mnangagwa for a third term in office as his current and final term nears completion.

Mnangagwa ousted long-time president Robert Mugabe in a military engineered coup d’etat in November 2017 and promised to rule for only two terms.

Speaking to Zimbabwe’s state-controlled newspaper The Herald recently, Zanu PF Women’s League political commissar Maybe Mbowa said: “As the women’s league, we are appealing to president Mnangagwa to remain in office beyond 2028.”

“We are appealing to you, secretary for women’s affairs comrade Chinomona, to deliver our message to the president. We are aware that he is a constitutionalist, but we are also involved in coming up with the constitution. We want him to remain in office beyond 2028.”

A move to amend Zimbabwe’s constitution and give Mnangagwa a third term has created a rift within Zanu PF, with a group of war veterans threatening to topple him before 2030.

Blessed Geza, a veteran of the liberation war in the 1960s and 1970s, has openly called for Mnangagwa to leave office, saying the push to remove Mugabe and place him in state house was a mistake.

“We are saying – as war veterans – enough is enough. You have shown that you have failed. It can’t get any worse,” Geza said at a press conference in Harare a week ago, before a recommendation to expel him from the party was made a dew days later.

Geza is also a member of Zanu PF’s central committee.

Geza said at the media conference: “Corruption has become a security threat because these people are being protected by Emmerson. So, as war veterans, including masses, we are being asked, ‘Why did you give us this kind of a person? We no longer like him’. So, we are pleading with you: Leave peacefully. If you don’t, people will use the constitution for you to go.”

The Zimbabwean president has initially downplayed suggestions for a third term, saying he would stick by the constitution.

“There is not an iota of evidence where Zanu PF or I, as president, has ever expressed the violation of our constitution,” Mnangagwa said.

“We in Zanu PF are very democratic and we obey the constitution,” the octogenarian leader has been quoted by Africa News as saying.

However, more voices from within his party have openly campaigned for his extension of power, making it more clear that he is behind the campaign.