Mugabes to Mnangagwa: 'Thank you for the plane, we love you'

Zimbabwe’s ex-president Robert Mugabe has called on his successor Emmerson Mnangagwa to allow the opposition to demonstrate peacefully, even as he reiterated his acceptance of the July 30 elections won by the ruling ZANU-PF party, a victory rejected by the opposition.

Mugabe, who was addressing mourners at the funeral of his mother-in-law, also revisited the November 2017 operation that ousted from office.

He repeated the allegation he first made on the eve of the July 29 election that the ‘coup-plotter’ were aware of his preferred successor, Sydney Sekeramayi.

Dr. Sydney Tigere Sekeramayi served in the government of Zimbabwe as Minister of Defence between 2013 and 2017.

Grace Mugabe, who had a strained relationship with Mnangagwa, was however full of praise for the president, thanking him for chartering a luxury plane to bring her home from Singapore, so that she could attend the funeral.

“(Mnangagwa) loves us. He knows we we love him too. We pray for him because it’s God’s will that he is President. We pray that he be given the wisdom to lead the country,’‘ Grace Mugabe is quoted to have said.

“It was a beautiful plane, a brand new Gulfstream from Qatar. If I get rich I will buy one just like that!”

On the eve of the election, the former 94-year-old leader said he did not want his successor and the Zanu-PF, the party from which they both came, to be re-elected, adding that he could not vote for those who had treated him “badly” when he had been forced to resign after a military coup.

Second president since the country’s independence in 1980, Emmerson Mnangagwa, 75, was elected in the first round of the presidential election with 50.8% of the vote, just enough to avoid a second round against opposition leader Nelson Chamisa (MDC), who won 44.3% of the vote.

Zimbabwe 2018 vote: Mugabe, post-election crisis, failed poll petition