In November 2017, Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe was removed as president and party leader of ZANU–PF and was replaced by Emmerson Mnangagwa.
On the evening of 14 November 2017, elements of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) gathered around Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, and seized control of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation and key areas of the city. The next day, the ZDF issued a statement saying that it was not a coup d'état and that President Mugabe was safe, although the situation would return to normal only after the ZDF had dealt with the "criminals" around Mugabe responsible for the socio-economic problems of Zimbabwe. Jacob Zuma, then-President of South Africa, phoned Mugabe and was told that Mugabe was under house arrest but otherwise "fine".
The uprising took place amid tensions in the ruling ZANU–PF party between former First Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa (who was backed by the ZDF) and First Lady Grace Mugabe (who was backed by the younger G40 faction) over who would succeed the 93-year-old President Mugabe. A week after Mnangagwa was fired and forced to flee the country, and a day before troops moved into Harare, Zimbabwe Defence Forces chief Constantino Chiwenga issued a statement that purges of senior ZANU–PF officials like Mnangagwa had to stop.
On 19 November, ZANU-PF removed Mugabe as party leader, replacing him with Mnangagwa, and issued a deadline of 20 November for Mugabe to resign the presidency or face impeachment. Mugabe did not resign, so on 21 November a joint session of Parliament met for his impeachment. After the session convened, Mugabe sent a letter to Zimbabwe's Parliament resigning the presidency. Second Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko became the Acting President. Mnangagwa was sworn in as president on 24 November 2017.
Background
Early October
In the first week of October 2017, tensions between Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Grace Mugabe, two leading figures to replace the 93-year-old Robert Mugabe as President of Zimbabwe, were prominently displayed in the public sphere. Mnangagwa, a protégé of Mugabe's who had been his ally since the Zimbabwe War of Independence in the 1960s, said that doctors had confirmed that he had been poisoned during an August 2017 political rally led by the president and had to be airlifted to a hospital in South Africa for treatment. He also pledged his loyalty to the ZANU–PF party and President Mugabe and said that the story spread by his supporters that Grace Mugabe had ordered the poisoning via a dairy farm she controlled was untrue.
Grace Mugabe denied the poisoning claims as ridiculous and rhetorically asked: "Who is Mnangagwa, who is he?" Phelekezela Mphoko, Zimbabwe's other vice-president, publicly criticised Mnangagwa, saying that his comments about the August incident were part of an attempt to destabilise the country and undermine the authority of the president, since doctors had actually concluded that stale food was to blame.
4 October
During a planned speech in Harare, Grace Mugabe went off-script to attack Mnangagwa, saying that her supporters were constantly receiving threats that if Mnangagwa did not succeed Mugabe, they would be assassinated and that the faction backing Mnangagwa was plotting a coup d'état.
At a rally, President Mugabe publicly rebuked Mnangagwa for the first time. At the same rally, Grace Mugabe called him a "coup plotter" and a "coward". The president fired Mnangagwa on 6 November. A statement from Information Minister Simon Khaya-Moyo said that Mnangagwa had "consistently and persistently exhibited traits of disloyalty, disrespect, deceitfulness and unreliability".
Mnangagwa's dismissal essentially left Grace Mugabe, supported by her Generation 40 (G40) faction of younger ZANU–PF officials, as the only major contender to succeed Robert Mugabe. Mnangagwa, one of Mugabe's last political allies who had stayed with him since independence in 1980, had the support of several generals in the Zimbabwean army, who had publicly stated that only a veteran of the war for independence – which would rule out Grace Mugabe – should rule the country. Although Mugabe had depended on support from the military to maintain his rule, in the last few years he had undertaken a systematic replacement of old veterans from the war of independence in important ZANU–PF party positions with younger officials who did not fight in the war. This move was seen as risky because Grace Mugabe was a divisive figure in Zimbabwe and did not have much support from important ZANU–PF officials from the liberation war era or in the South African region.