President Emmerson Mnangagwa is dumping former President Robert Mugabe’s much loved Marxist-Leninist ideology of socialism and moving towards a neo-liberal ideology a senior government official has revealed.

Posting on Twitter deputy government spokesperson Energy Mutodi said, “Guardian News journalist Jason Burke who paid me a visit today agreed with me that fuel shortages, power cuts and other urban problems show the Zimbabwean economy is going through a transformative process from socialist to a neo-liberal and demand driven economy.”

In the ten years he spent in prison under the white Rhodesian regime, 1964 to 1974, Mugabe immersed himself in Marxist-Leninist ideology. He emerged with two very strongly held beliefs.

First, the revolution of the people must be led by a “vanguard party.” In the Soviet Union, it was the Communist Party; in Zimbabwe, it was, and is, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). To Marxist-Leninists, only the vanguard party is capable of bringing about true socialism, and therefore it must always remain in power. It cannot accept losing an election, or existing as an “opposition” party.

Second, private investors are a threat to socialist power and must be discouraged. The Marxist state must be the main capital investor in production facilities. In the Zimbabwe context, the white commercial farmer, an independent business investor, was considered a temporary exception to the ideological rule.

Because of Mugabe’s belief in the supreme authority of the vanguard party, the headquarters of the ZANU party, standing majestically opposite the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Harare, is the center of power – not the Zimbabwe state with its civil service and alleged rule of law. ZANU-PF is a state within a state, and is superior to the state.

The Vanguard Party ideology caused President Mugabe a great deal of difficulty in the second half of the 1990s, fifteen years after his arrival as Head of State in 1980. His success in improving the level of education, and in graduating an increasing number of young people with good diplomas, stood in direct contradiction to his anti-private sector ideology. In the absence of new private investors – who were actively discouraged from investing – young people who left school could not find jobs. This caused Mugabe to lose popularity, both among former students and their parents.