"The people have spoken," Zimbabwe's Mnangagwa tells crowd

HARARE - 22 November 2017: Zimbabwe's former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is due to be sworn in to replace Robert Mugabe as president on Friday, told a cheering crowd in Harare on Wednesday that the country was entering a new stage of democracy.

"The people have spoken. The voice of the people is the voice of God," Mnangagwa told thousands of supporters who had gathered outside the ruling ZANU-PF party's offices.

"Today we are witnessing the beginning of a new and unfolding democracy."

Mugabe resigned as Zimbabwe's president on Tuesday, a week after the army and his former political allies moved to end four decades of rule by a man once feted as an independence hero who became feared as a despot.