Robert Mugabe ousted from ruling party

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe was on Sunday facing the imminent end of his 37-year rule as the once-loyal ZANU-PF party sacked him as its leader and army generals piled pressure on him to resign. Mugabe’s grip on power was broken last week when the military took over, angered at his wife Grace’s emergence as the leading candidate to succeed the 93-year-old President.

Tens of thousands of overjoyed demonstrators flooded the streets of Zimbabwe in peaceful celebrations marking the apparent end of his long and authoritarian rule. Outside a ZANU-PF meeting in Harare, a delegate said that Mugabe had been ousted as party chief and replaced by Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was previously Grace Mugabe’s chief rival to succeed the ageing president. “A resolution has been adopted to recall the president and elevate Mnangagwa as the party president,” said a delegate.