Pressure is mounting on Robert Mugabe to step down as Zimbabwe’s president, as efforts to force the veteran leader to resign after nearly four decades in office gain traction.
Zimbabwe has been in political turmoil since the early hours of Wednesday, when the country’s armed forces seized power and placed Mugabe under house arrest.
The embattled 93-year-old leader so far appears resistant to demands to step down. However, he is increasingly running out of options as even some of his closest allies, including top officials within his ruling ZANU-PF party, look determined to remove him from power.
Issuing a “stark warning”, Zimbabwe’s influential war veterans on Friday said Mugabe, the patron of their 35,000-strong association, should not be allowed to stay any longer in power.
“If he doesn’t leave, we are going to settle the score,” Chris Mutsvangwa, the war veterans’ leader, told a press conference in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.
“There is no going back about Mugabe – he must leave,” added Mutsvangwa.
Al Jazeera reported that the independence war fighters’ association called for a mass rally in Harare today, urging residents to march to State House in large numbers to demand Mugabe’s resignation.
Follow TKG on Twitter & Facebook
