Robert Mugabe has refused to step down, the reviled dictator delivering a
rambling 20-minute speech after being sacked by his party and replaced
by ‘The Crocodile’ but does NOT offer his resignation as President.
Mugabe
promised to resolve internal conflicts within his Zanu PF party and
called for national unity and security, but gave absolutely no hint of
his much-anticipated resignation.
Veterans leader Chris
Mutsvangwa subsequently said plans for Mugabe’s impeachment will move
ahead on Monday after he was given until midday to step down.
‘He won’t last the week,’ a senior Zanu-PF minister told MailOnline.
Speaking
from the State House, his official residence, the dictator, who was
wearing a dark suit and red tie, called for his nation to ‘move
forward’.
The announcement, which MailOnline understands was
recorded earlier today, attracted the highest viewing numbers for the
national broadcaster, ZBC, since 1980 when the Zanu-PF won power.
The
broadcast was delayed by technical difficulties and was preceded by a
screening of Shakira’s Waka Waka (This Time For Africa) song, as well as
hours of revolutionary and celebratory tunes on Zimbabwe’s national
broadcaster, ZBC.
The lyrics of one of the songs said, ‘all of
our problems have disappeared’ in Shona, the local language. Another
said: ‘It was so difficult and so heavy, but because of you, God, we are
here, we have conquered’.
Street celebrations, which began as
news of the resignation broke, quickly broke down into a sense of
despondency. The streets of Harare were deserted as Zimbabwe struggled
to process the news.
There was almost no traffic on the streets
and an eerie silence descended as people stayed indoors amid uncertainty
about what may lie ahead.
One man, who asked not to be named, told MailOnline: ‘My dreams have all died. We are returning to a life of fear.’
Residents
were concerned that the police, which had been withdrawn by the army,
would return to the streets and start to enforce Mr Mugabe’s repressive
controls once again.
The speech came after MailOnline revealed
that the elderly dictator was in a state of psychological collapse,
crying for his dead son and late first wife, refusing to speak or wash
and staging a desperate hunger strike.
Ahead of his meeting with
army officials to discuss his exit, Mugabe was ‘wailing profusely’ and
saying that he wished he could speak to his dead wife, Sally Mugabe, and
his late son, Michael Nhamodzenyika, who died from cerebral malaria in
1966 at the age of three.