Case for investing in Zimbabwe may just have got weaker

President Robert Mugabe's elevation yesterday of the hardline Emmerson Mnangagwa to the vice-presidency of Zimbabwe came as no surprise.

As speculation mounted about who would succeed Mugabe when he finally departs the political scene, the 90-year-old president decided to tighten his grip on his ruling Zanu-PF party. He used his wife, the increasingly powerful Grace Mugabe, and the state media to publicly batter his then vice-president, Joice Mujuru, regarded, in Zimbabwe's bizarre politics as a ''moderate'' and until recently as a likely future president. Just to make sure, he changed the rules so that he could appoint his party deputies himself.

Africa's oldest president went on to pummel Mujuru in front of 12000 people at last week's Zanu-PF congress, accusing her of treachery and dishonesty, even suggesting that she was in cahoots with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

The coup de grace came this week when he fired Mujuru and at least seven other ministers - more dismissals are said to be on the way - apparently perceived by him to be loyal to her.

A purge this extensive could only happen in Zimbabwe, where power politics eclipse democratic conventions and where elections are stolen. It is democracy of a special type.

Enter ''The Crocodile''. If anything, the secretive Mnangagwa, a Chinese-trained guerrilla and Mugabe loyalist, is even more hardcore than Mugabe himself. The securocrat was in charge of internal security in the 1980s when the Korean-trained Fifth Brigade killed up to 20000 civilians in a crackdown against rebels loyal to Joshua Nkomo.

Critically, Mnangagwa strongly supports Zimbabwe's economic nationalisation drive, which forces foreign-owned companies to cede 51% of their ownership to locals.

Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa told an investment workshop in South Africa last month that Zimbabwe has enormous investment potential.

Maybe, but the signs are not good.