Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Zimbabwe's week of upheaval in two minutes 
 
 Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF party has summoned its MPs to discuss the future of its leader, President Robert Mugabe, after a deadline for his resignation came and went on Monday. 
 
 The deadline was set by Mr Mugabe's own party, Zanu-PF. 
 
 The embattled leader surprised Zimbabweans on Sunday, declaring on TV that he planned to remain as president. 
 
 Zanu-PF says it backs impeachment, and proceedings could begin as soon as Tuesday when parliament meets. 
 
 In a draft motion seen by Reuters news agency, the party blamed the president for an "unprecedented economic tailspin". 
 
 Mr Mugabe's grip on power has weakened considerably since the country's army intervened last Wednesday in a row over who should succeed him. 
 
 The crisis began two weeks ago when the 93-year-old leader sacked his deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa, angering army commanders who saw it as an attempt to position his wife Grace as next president. 
 
 Zimbabwe has since then seen huge street rallies demanding his immediate resignation. 
 
 The protests have been backed by the influential war veterans - who fought in the conflict that led to independence from Britain in 1980. 
 
 The group's leader, Chris Mutsvangwa, on Monday called for more demonstrations. "Mugabe, your rule is over," Mr Mutsvangwa said. "The emperor has no clothes." 
 
 Choreographing a departure 
 
 Andrew Harding in Harare 
 
 The city is swirling with rumours that Mr Mugabe is planning his resignation and that he may go back on television to announce it at any stage, and that Sunday's speech was simply about giving carte blanche to the military for what they've done. 
 
 But we just don't know at this stage if he will give in to the pressure from the war veterans, his own party, and the public. 
 
 Mr Mugabe said in his speech that he planned to preside over the Zanu-PF congress next month, a statement people here found baffling after the party voted to strip him of his leadership and kick out his wife. 
 
 What is clear is that everyone here believes that the Mugabe era is over. Saturday's protests unleashed something and people believe that a line has been crossed. Now it is really about negotiating the time, the process, the choreography of Mr Mugabe's departure. 
 
 The fear of Zanu-PF and of the security services will not go away overnight. People here grew up with that fear. In the meantime, the streets are calm, but Tuesday may bring more demonstrations. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Robert Mugabe: "The congress is due... I will preside over its processes" 
 
 What did Mugabe say in his speech? 
 
 During the 20-minute address, the president, who was flanked by generals, made no mention of the pressure from his party and the public to quit. 
 
 Instead, he declared that the military had done nothing wrong by seizing power and placing him under house arrest. 
 
 "Whatever the pros and cons of how they [the army] went about their operation, I, as commander-in-chief, do acknowledge their concerns," he said, in reference to the army's move last week to take over the state broadcaster in the capital Harare. 
 
 He also said "the [Zanu-PF] party congress is due in a few weeks and I will preside over its processes". 
 
 Before Mr Mugabe's speech, Mr Mnangagwa was named as Zanu-PF's new leader and candidate for the 2018 general elections, while Mr Mugabe's wife was expelled. 
 
 BBC Africa Editor Fergal Keane said his understanding was that Mr Mugabe had agreed to resign, but then changed his mind. 
 
 Our correspondent says the generals have no intention of forcing Mr Mugabe out by the barrel of a gun, and are happy to let the Zanu-PF carry out its procedures, working through impeachment if necessary. 
 
 So what happens next? 
 
 Impeachment proceedings could be launched on Tuesday in parliament - but it is not clear how long this would take. 
 
 Both the National Assembly and the Senate need to pass a vote by simple majority to begin the process, which is laid out in the constitution. 
 
 This can either be on grounds of "serious misconduct", "violation" of the constitution or "failure to obey, uphold or defend" it, or "incapacity". 
 
 The chambers must then appoint a joint committee to investigate removing the president. 
 
 If the committee recommends impeachment, the president can then be removed if both houses back it with two-thirds majorities. 
 
 The opposition MDC-T party has tried unsuccessfully to impeach Mr Mugabe in the past, but this time the ruling party - which has an overwhelming majority in both houses - is likely to go against him. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Zimbabwe reacts: "We need him to resign... our lives are terrible right now" 
 
 The advantage for the military is that if Mr Mugabe is impeached, it can claim that he was removed legally, and not by force. 
 
 The problem for the generals is that the current vice-president would then take power. That is Phelekezela Mphoko, a supporter of Mr Mugabe's wife Grace. 
 
 The military would prefer to install Emmerson Mnangagwa, the former vice-president who was briefly exiled. 
 
 And it is still possible that Mr Mugabe could delay the process or cling to power by refusing to resign - and be forced into exile himself. 
 
 What's the reaction been? 
 
 The War Veterans Association, which used to back Mr Mugabe, now says it is time for him to step down. 
 
 "Thirty-seven years, you have had your time, you are toast now politically," Mr Mutsvangwa told the BBC. 
 
 Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said he was "baffled" by the president's address. 
 
 "He's playing a game. He has let the whole nation down," he told Reuters news agency. 
 
 Mr Mugabe has led the country since it gained independence from Britain in 1980. 

 FILE - In this Aug. 30 2017 file photo, Zimbabwean Deputy President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, greets party supporters at a ZANU-PF rally in Gweru, Zimbabwe. A Zimbabwe ruling party official confirmed Sunday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Aug. 30 2017 file photo, Zimbabwean Deputy President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, greets party supporters at a ZANU-PF rally in Gweru, Zimbabwe. A Zimbabwe ruling party official confirmed Sunday, Nov. 19, 2017 that the Central Committee has fired President Robert Mugabe as party leader and replaced... (Associated Press) 
 
 JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Emmerson Mnangagwa, elected Sunday as the new leader of Zimbabwe's ruling political party and positioned to take over as the country's president, has engineered a remarkable comeback using skills he no doubt learned from his longtime mentor, President Robert Mugabe. 
 
 Mnangagwa served for decades as Mugabe's enforcer — a role that gave him a reputation for being astute, ruthless and effective at manipulating the levers of power. Among the population, he is more feared than popular, but he has strategically fostered a loyal support base within the military and security forces. 
 
 A leading government figure since Zimbabwe's independence in 1980, he became vice president in 2014 and is so widely known as the "Crocodile" that his supporters are called Team Lacoste for the brand's crocodile logo. 
 
 The 75-year-old "is smart and skillful, but will he be a panacea for Zimbabwe's problems? Will he bring good governance and economic management? We'll have to watch this space," said Piers Pigou, southern Africa expert for the International Crisis Group. 
 
 Mugabe unwittingly set in motion the events that led to his own downfall, firing his vice president on Nov. 6. Mnangagwa fled the country to avoid arrest while issuing a ringing statement saying he would return to lead Zimbabwe. 
 
 "Let us bury our differences and rebuild a new and prosperous Zimbabwe, a country that is tolerant to divergent views, a country that respects opinions of others, a country that does note isolate itself from the rest of the world because of one stubborn individual who believes he is entitled to rule this country until death," he said in the Nov. 8 statement. 
 
 He has not been seen in public but is believed to be back in Zimbabwe. 
 
 For weeks, Mnangagwa had been publicly demonized by Mugabe and his wife. Grace, so he had time to prepare his strategy. Within days of the vice president's dismissal, his supporters in the military put Mugabe and his wife under house arrest. 
 
 When Mugabe refused to resign, a massive demonstration Saturday brought thousands of people into the streets of the capital, Harare. It was not a spontaneous uprising. Thousands of professionally produced posters praising Mnangagwa and the military had been printed ahead of time. 
 
 "It was not a last-minute operation," Pigou said. "The demonstration was orchestrated." 
 
 At the same time, Mnangagwa's allies in the ruling ZANU-PF party lobbied for the removal of Mugabe as the party leader. At a Central Committee meeting Sunday, Mnangagwa was voted in as the new leader of the party, which had been led by Mugabe since 1977. 
 
 In an interview with The Associated Press years ago, Mnangagwa was terse and stone-faced, backing up his reputation for saying little but acting decisively. Party insiders say that he can be charming and has friends of all colors. 
 
 Mnangagwa joined the fight against white minority rule in Rhodesia while still a teen in the 1960s. In 1963, he received military training in Egypt and China. As one of the earliest guerrilla fighters against Ian Smith's Rhodesian regime, he was captured, tortured and convicted of blowing up a locomotive in 1965. 
 
 Sentenced to death by hanging, he was found to be under 21, and his punishment was commuted to 10 years in prison. He was jailed with other prominent nationalists including Mugabe. 
 
 While imprisoned, Mnangagwa studied through a correspondence school. After his release in 1975, he went to Zambia, where he completed a law degree and started practicing. Soon he went to newly independent Marxist Mozambique, where he became Mugabe's assistant and bodyguard. In 1979, he accompanied Mugabe to the Lancaster House talks in London that led to the end of Rhodesia and the birth of Zimbabwe. 
 
 "Our relationship has over the years blossomed beyond that of master and servant to father and son," Mnangagwa wrote this month of his relationship with Mugabe. 
 
 When Zimbabwe achieved independence in 1980, Mnangagwa was appointed minister of security. He directed the merger of the Rhodesian army with Mugabe's guerrilla forces and the forces of rival nationalist leader Joshua Nkomo. Ever since, he has kept close ties with the military and security forces. 
 
 In 1983, Mugabe launched a brutal campaign against Nkomo's supporters that became known as the Matabeleland massacres for the deaths of 10,000 to 20,000 Ndebele people in Zimbabwe's southern provinces. 
 
 Mnangagwa was widely blamed for planning the campaign of the army's North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade on their deadly mission into the Matabeleland provinces. Mnangagwa denies this. 
 
 He also is reputed to have amassed a considerable fortune and was named in a United Nations investigation into exploitation of mineral resources in Congo and has been active in making Harare a significant diamond trading center. 
 
 In 2008, he was Mugabe's election agent in balloting that was marked by violence and allegations of vote-rigging. He also helped broker the creation of a coalition government that brought in opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister. 
 
 In recent years, Mnangagwa has promoted himself as an experienced leader who will bring stability to Zimbabwe. But his promises to return Zimbabwe to democracy and prosperity are viewed with skepticism by many experts. 
 
 "He has successfully managed a palace coup that leaves ZANU-PF and the military in charge. He's been Mugabe's bag man for decades," said Zimbabwean author and commentator Peter Godwin. "I have low expectations about what he will achieve as president. I hope I will be proved wrong." 
 
 Godwin, who has followed Mnangagwa for years, said he has little of Mugabe's charisma or talent for public speaking. 
 
 Todd Moss, Africa expert for the Center for Global Development, also expressed reservations. 
 
 "Despite his claims to be a business-friendly reformer, Zimbabweans know Mnangagwa is the architect of the Matabeland massacres and that he abetted Mugabe's looting of the country," Moss said. "Mnangagwa is part of its sad past, not its future." 

 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. 
 
 Two sources - one a senior member of the government, the other familiar with talks with leaders of the military - had told Reuters Mugabe would announce his resignation to the nation after ZANU-PF dismissed him as its leader in a move precipitated by an army takeover four days earlier. 
 
 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. 
 
 Instead, he said the events of the week were not “a challenge to my authority as head of state and government”, and pledged to preside over the congress scheduled for next month. 
 
 Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was dumbstruck. 
 
 “I am baffled. It’s not just me, it’s the whole nation. He’s playing a game,” he told Reuters. “He is trying to manipulate everyone. He has let the whole nation down.” 
 
 ZANU-PF had given the 93-year-old, who has led his country since independence in 1980, less than 24 hours to quit as head of state or face impeachment, an attempt to secure a peaceful end to his tenure after a de facto military coup. 
 
 Chris Mutsvangwa, the leader of the liberation war veterans who have been spearheading an 18-month campaign to oust Mugabe, said plans to impeach him in parliament, which next sits on Tuesday, would now go ahead, and that there would be mass protests on Wednesday. 
 
 He also implied that Mugabe, who spoke with a firm voice but occasionally lost his way in his script during the 20-minute address, was not aware of what had happened just hours earlier. 
 
 “BLIND OR DEAF” 
 
 “Either somebody within ZANU-PF didn’t tell him what had happened within his own party, so he went and addressed that meeting oblivious, or (he was) blind or deaf to what his party has told him,” Mutsvangwa said. 
 
 ZANU-PF’s central committee had earlier named Emmerson Mnangagwa as its new leader. It was Mugabe’s sacking of Mnangagwa as his vice-president - to pave the way for his wife Grace to succeed him - that triggered the army’s intervention. 
 
 People watch as Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe addresses the nation on television, at a bar in Harare, Zimbabwe, November 19, 2017. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo 
 
 On Saturday, hundreds of thousands had taken to the streets of the capital Harare to celebrate Mugabe’s expected downfall and hail a new era for their country. 
 
 In jubilant scenes, men, women and children ran alongside armoured cars and the troops who stepped in to target what the army called “criminals” in Mugabe’s inner circle. 
 
 Many heralded a “second liberation” and spoke of their dreams for political and economic change after two decades of deepening repression and hardship. 
 
 They, like the more than 3 million Zimbabweans who have emigrated to neighbouring South Africa in search of a better life, are likely to be bitterly disappointed by Mugabe’s defiance. 
 
 Speaking from a secret location in South Africa, his nephew, Patrick Zhuwao, had told Reuters that Mugabe and his wife were “ready to die for what is correct” rather than step down in order to legitimise what he described as a coup. 
 
 Zhuwao, who was also sanctioned by ZANU-PF, did not answer his phone on Sunday. However, Mugabe’s son Chatunga railed against those who had pushed out his father. 
 
 “You can’t fire a Revolutionary leader!” he wrote on this Facebook page. “ZANU-PF is nothing without President Mugabe.” 
 
 DANGER AHEAD 
 
 The huge crowds in Harare have given a quasi-democratic veneer to the army’s intervention, backing its assertion that it is merely effecting a constitutional transfer of power, rather than a plain coup, which would risk a diplomatic backlash. 
 
 But some of Mugabe’s opponents are uneasy about the prominent role played by the military, and fear Zimbabwe might be swapping one army-backed autocrat for another, rather than allowing the people to choose their next leader. 
 
 “The real danger of the current situation is that, having got their new preferred candidate into State House, the military will want to keep him or her there, no matter what the electorate wills,” former education minister David Coltart said. 
 
 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. 
 
 Slideshow (24 Images) 
 
 Besides changing its leadership, ZANU-PF said it wanted to change the constitution to reduce the power of the president, a possible sign of a desire to move towards a more pluralistic and inclusive political system. 
 
 However, Mnangagwa’s history as state security chief during the so-called Gukurahundi crackdown, when an estimated 20,000 people were killed by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade in Matabeleland in the early 1980s, suggested that quick, sweeping change was unlikely. 
 
 “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.
– Robert Mugabe, already known as the Energizer Bunny of southern African strongman leaders, stunned Zimbabwe Sunday by failing to deliver a widely expected resignation. Instead, the 93-year-old, speaking after his own ZANU-PF party fired him as leader, promised to preside over a party congress set for next month, Reuters reports. Mugabe, flanked by generals during a 20-minute televised speech, said the events of the previous days, including an army takeover, didn't pose "a challenge to my authority as head of state and government." The party earlier said it would launch impeachment proceedings if he didn't resign by noon Monday, a deadline that has now passed. According to Fergal Keane, the BBC's Africa editor, Mugabe apparently decided to resign but then changed his mind. Keane says the military appears to have decided to let the impeachment process take its course instead of forcing Mugabe out. Emmerson Mnangagwa, the vice president whose firing led to the army takeover, was elected as the party's new leader during its Central Committee meeting Sunday. The 75-year-old, nicknamed "The Crocodile" for his shrewd and ruthless ways, is believed to have now returned to Zimbabwe from abroad, the AP reports. At the same meeting, ZANU-PF expelled Grace Mugabe, the president's deeply unpopular wife.