Ruling party calls for Zimbabwe president to stay in power, despite two

Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa, right, rose to the presidency in 2017 after a military coup.

Zimbabwe’s ruling party has voted to extend the term of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, boosting momentum for another violation of term limits in a continent where prolonged rule by autocratic leaders is increasingly common.

Delegates of the ZANU-PF party, which has dominated Zimbabwe since its independence from white minority rule in 1980, sang and danced ecstatically at the end of their annual conference on the weekend after unanimously approving the motion to keep the 83-year-old president in power until 2030, breaching the two-term limit.

Dozens of other African governments have found ways to extend the rule of their leaders in recent decades – far more than in any other region of the