HARARE (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe stunned Zimbabwe on Sunday by making no mention of resignation in a television address, defying his own ZANU-PF party, which had sacked him hours earlier, and hundreds of thousands of protesters who had already hailed his downfall. But in the speech from his State House office, sitting alongside a row of generals, Mugabe acknowledged criticisms from ZANU-PF, the military and the public but made no mention of his own position. "ZANU-PF is nothing without President Mugabe." The United States, a longtime Mugabe critic, said it was looking forward to a new era in Zimbabwe, while President Ian Khama of neighbouring Botswana said Mugabe had no diplomatic support in the region and should resign at once. "The deep state that engineered this change of leadership will remain, thwarting any real democratic reform," said Miles Tendi, a Zimbabwean academic at Oxford University.

Source: The Star November 19, 2017 08:47 UTC