SELF-exiled former Foreign Affairs minister, Walter Mzembi has issued a stark warning to President Emmerson Mnangagwa of an impending palace coup by the same grouping of Zanu PF politicians cheering him as he clamps down on real and perceived detractors.

Believed to be holed up in neighbouring South Africa, Mzembi said late former president Robert Mugabe, in his last days, was afflicted by what he termed "superstar dictator disease" which made him paranoid and started seeing enemies in everyone.

"Mugabe suffered this disease of always shouting at people when he took the podium; the briefings he got incensed him, but it was all part of the act and conspiracy.

"They would tell him 'You are a revolutionary you go down fighting'. Some of us desperately trying to prop up Brand Zimbabwe as part of our brief and mandate, would warn him as l do to my Murambwi brother here that they are trying to set you up for failure," said Mzembi.

The former Cabinet minister in Mugabe's long reign, said Mnangagwa was surrounded by liars who were creating and peddling false narratives to prompt him to make irrational attacks against real and perceived detractors.

"Your rhetoric and the clampdown on civil society are all part of the act to make you look very bad, a superstar dictator hosting a SADC Summit. So, they make you see ghosts and enemies in your own people and children, arrest and torture them in your name and spread footage which also goes viral in your own 'mhesvamukono' language!

"Soon, you start receiving phone calls from your own SADC colleagues under pressure from the international community alarmed by such blatant and brazen violation of human rights and the next thing you have a boycott of this summit, and your own people box you exactly where they want you to be, an incompetent leader!

Wake up and smell the coffee Mr President, you are being set up to fail by your own. Stop this operation against your people, its loaded with conspiracy," said Mzembi.