Mugabe has maintained an iron grip on power for 37 years after helping topple white minority rule in then-Rhodesia. His leadership, once regarded with hope of united independence, became characterized by a brutal crackdown on opposition, the seizure of white-owned properties and a crash in Zimbabwe's economy.
It was Mugabe's firing of his deputy Mnangagwa two weeks earlier that seemed to prompt his own downfall; the Zimbabwean army took over Wednesday, in what it described as a "bloodless correction."
Mugabe said Sunday that the army takeover was not "a challenge to my authority as head of state and government."
Sunday's vote by the central committee of ZANU-PF came from Mugabe's own party, "the party that for years was considered a bastion of (Mugabe's) regime, but has recently been riven with rivalry and infighting," reports NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton from neighboring South Africa's city of Johannesburg.
On Sunday, the increasingly-isolated Mugabe met with the military leader who had placed him under house arrest. Aftwerward Mugabe said, "arising from today's meeting is a strong sense of collegiality and comradeship."
But as Ofeibea reports, Mugabe was "looking a little weary and sometimes losing his place," during the speech, even as he clings to his seat of power, for now.