Robert Mugabe will continue to have a role to play in Zimbabwean politics, the Jesuit priest who helped negotiate his resignation has told the BBC.<\/p>\n
Father Fidelis Mukonori said he would provide “advice” as an elder statesman, including to the new president.<\/p>\n
Mr Mugabe, 93, resigned on Tuesday after a military intervention and days of mass protests.<\/p>\n
Mr Mukonori said he could not confirm reports that the ex-leader was granted $10m (\u00a37.5m) to ease him out of office.<\/p>\n
Emmerson Mnangagwa was sworn in to replace Mr Mugabe as president on Friday.<\/p>\n
Mr Mnangagwa, long a close ally of Mr Mugabe, was sacked earlier this month, triggering the political crisis that eventually saw his boss’s downfall.<\/p>\n
Father Mukonori, 70, who is close to Robert Mugabe and acted as a mediator between him and the military, said the new president would go to his predecessor for political counsel.<\/p>\n
“In the African world, senior citizens are there for advice,” he told the BBC’s Richard Galpin at a church outside the capital, Harare, after leading a service that included prayers giving thanks for the peaceful transfer of power.<\/p>\n
He referred to what Mr Mnangagwa said about his predecessor at his inauguration.<\/p>\n
“When he says ‘he’s my father, he’s my leader, he’s my mentor’, you tell me he’s going to stay off from his father, from his mentor, from his leader? I don’t think so.”<\/p>\n
The priest said that Mr Mugabe and his wife Grace remained at their house in Harare and had no plans to leave the country.<\/p>\n
The military takeover came in response to Mr Mugabe’s decision to position Grace as his successor and sack Mr Mnangagwa from the vice-presidency.<\/p>\n
Father Mukonori said he could not confirm\u00a0reports that the ex-president was granted millions of dollars and promised that his assets would not be touched to persuade him to step down.<\/p>\n
“We didn’t offer him anything… He resigned for the good of Zimbabwe,” he said.<\/p>\n
He added: “What I have read in the newspapers is about immunity [from prosecution], and that he will be looked after like any other former head of state.”<\/p>\n
Mr Mugabe leaving power, he added, was the best thing he had ever done.<\/p>\n
Separately on Sunday, Robert Mugabe was described as being “quite jovial” by a nephew in an interview with the French news agency AFP.<\/p>\n
“He is actually looking forward to his new life – farming and staying at the rural home. He has taken it well,” Leo Mugabe said.<\/p>\n
He said that Grace wanted to focus on already announced plans to build\u00a0the controversial $1bn Robert Mugabe University\u00a0in Mazowe, near Harare.<\/p>\n
There are fears that President Mnangagwa, who is associated with some of worst atrocities committed under the ruling Zanu-PF party since independence in 1980, will not usher in the democratic reforms that many in Zimbabwe are hoping for.<\/p>\n
But Father Mukonori said he believed the former spymaster knows that democracy is “crucial”.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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