When President Emmerson Mnangagwa came to power in the 2017 coup that toppled Robert Mugabe, celebrations on the streets of Harare were matched by relief in chancelleries from London to Beijing.
The man known as “The Crocodile” may have had a terrifying past, but he was seen as a pragmatist.
Mnangagwa’s efforts to re-engage with the West have comprehensively failed, however.
Living up to his moniker more often than not, the Zimbabwean president, 83, has spent the past eight years consolidating his power with ruthless efficiency and is now seeking to extend it, plotting a constitutional overhaul that could theoretically keep him in office until he is 101.
The proposal has caused such disquiet – even among elements of the military hierarchy that swept him to power – that some are now openly suggesting he could suffer the same fate as Mugabe.
Those warnings are emanating from within the ruling establishment itself. A dissident security faction has emerged within the Zanu PF ruling party, led by Air Vice-Mshl Henry Muchena, a retired senior air force officer.
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Its largely anonymous members – retired generals, civil servants and self-styled veterans of the liberation war – have submitted a petition demanding a referendum on proposals to extend the president’s rule beyond 2028, when he was set to stand down.
Air Vice-Mshl Muchena, using language strikingly similar to that deployed against Mugabe, insists he remains loyal – but to the Zimbabwean people rather than their president.
He also issued an ominous warning should Mnangagwa refuse demands for a referendum on the proposed reforms.
“The electorate is watching,” he told The Telegraph. “History is watching. Every Zimbabwean will remember those who chose personal enrichment over constitutional duty. We warn: do not betray the people.”
Given the rarity – and danger – of criticism from within the regime, Mr Mnangagwa has been forced twice in recent weeks into crisis talks with Muchena.
“Regrettably, the two meetings failed to produce any results,” Muchena told The Telegraph, saying the president had treated his concerns with “contempt”.
The showdown carries clear echoes of the coup that ousted Mugabe in November 2017.
The generals behind it insisted they were not carrying out a coup at all, but defending the constitution and purging the “corrupt elite” surrounding the former president.
Muchena’s group has likewise directed criticism at a trio of influential tycoons around the president, accusing them of bankrolling attempts to prolong his rule, with MPs allegedly receiving cash payouts and luxury vehicles in exchange for their support, claims dismissed by Zanu-PF leaders as “factional malice”.
Others on the fringes of the movement are more explicit still.
Jealousy Mawarire, an activist with close ties to Mugabe loyalists who fled Zimbabwe after the coup and who now advises Muchena’s group, said: “We have seen this kind of intransigence before from a sitting president whose colleagues are warning him against being captured by people whose chief interest is to loot the national coffers.
“So, there is a strong possibility that history repeats itself. If it does, President Mnangagwa will have no one to blame but himself.”
On Thursday, the lower house of Zimbabwe’s pliant Parliament overwhelmingly adopted a reform bill, known in Zimbabwe as CAB3, that would initially extend Mnangagwa’s second – and supposedly final – term to 2030.
The bill now moves to the upper house of parliament, where it is also expected to sail through as Mnangagwa’s governing Zanu PF party controls it.
His opponents fear the two-year extension would merely be the first step. The new provisions would replace direct presidential elections with a parliamentary vote, leaving Mnangagwa’s political future in the hands of MPs who have a track record of doing his bidding.
The reforms would also extend presidential and parliamentary terms from five to seven years.
Elsewhere in Africa, leaders have argued that constitutional changes automatically reset presidential term limits. Some Zimbabweans, therefore, suspect that Mnangagwa is seeking not merely another two years in office, but an additional 16.
Given that the president is 83, many see echoes of Mugabe’s ambition to remain in power “until God says ‘come, join the other angels’”.
Given the ruthlessness with which Mnangagwa has consolidated power in recent years, the greatest threat to his ambitions is likely to come from inside the ruling establishment.
Zanu-PF, which has governed uninterrupted since independence from Britain in 1980, only scraped a narrow victory in the 2023 election after a poll that international observers said was marred by intimidation and widespread irregularities.
However, the party now commands an effective two-thirds majority – enough to rewrite the constitution – after an obscure political operative, Sengezo Tshabangu, seized control of the main opposition party with judicial backing.
Tshabangu expelled MPs who resisted his authority and replaced them with loyalists after a series of controversial by-elections in which genuine opposition figures were barred from standing.
Efforts by veteran opposition leader Tendai Biti to forge a coalition capable of resisting CAB3 have made little impression. He said he and others had been beaten, arrested and stripped of their businesses, while rallies had been ruthlessly suppressed. Speaking by telephone from Harare, Mr Biti insisted the struggle would continue.
“The bill is a coup against the people and constitution of Zimbabwe,” he said. “It will push our country to the precipice of a violent implosion.”
Yet it is not only the democratic opposition that has been weakened. Mnangagwa – who insists CAB3 is a necessary structural reform to counter populism and ethnic division – has also moved against the once powerful coterie surrounding Grace Mugabe, the former president’s widow and would-be successor.
Saviour Kasukuwere, Zanu-PF’s once-feared political commissar and de facto leader of the G40 faction, denounced the president from exile in South Africa. “Mnangagwa has started down a very dangerous road,” he said. “This could lead to very tragic consequences if he is not careful.”
Yet Kasukuwere cuts a lonely figure these days.
Grace Mugabe – whom Mnangagwa once accused of lacing his ice cream with poison – has largely retreated into seclusion amid reports that she has cut a deal with the president to preserve her wealth and shield her from extradition to South Africa.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Moyo, long regarded as the intellectual architect of the G40 faction, has defected to Mnangagwa’s camp, emerging as one of CAB3’s most vocal defenders.
Despite presenting himself as a defender of constitutional order, Muchena – who had never previously spoken out – is not widely regarded as a democrat.
Analysts suspect he is acting as the operational face of Constantino Chiwenga, the country’s vice-president.
Chiwenga is widely believed to harbour a grudge. As chief of the armed forces in 2017, he was seen as the principal instigator of the coup against Mugabe.
But analysts say he was unable to take power directly, both to preserve the fiction that the intervention was not a coup and to avoid Zimbabwe’s exclusion from the African Union and regional bodies.
Instead, he became vice-president, reportedly on the understanding that he would eventually succeed Mnangagwa – a prospect that now appears increasingly remote, turning Chiwenga into an ardent constitutionalist.
Over the past eight years, the president has steadily weakened his deputy by dismantling the military network behind the 2017 coup, retiring senior officers or dispatching them to distant embassies.
He has also sidelined members of Chiwenga’s family, while promoting his own relatives.
A final showdown between president and deputy therefore looms. Whether Chiwenga still commands meaningful support within the armed forces – or is relying on a handful of retired officers willing to fight on his behalf – remains unclear.
For now, however, he is avoiding direct confrontation, preferring instead to deliver sermons in church about Hezekiah, the Old Testament king who persuaded God to extend his life by 15 years only to bring disaster upon Judah.
There is a significant difference, however, between prophesying downfall and engineering it.
For the moment, the Crocodile is still smiling. – Telegraph