Former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe says he never thought that his former protégé, Emmerson Mnangagwa would be the one who would turn against him.

The elderly statesman had been in power for 37 years when the military led Operation Restore Legacy ousted him to make way for Mnangagwa to take over.

Mugabe said, “I never thought he whom I had nurtured and brought into government and whose life I had worked so hard in prison to save as he was threatened with hanging that one day, he will be the man who would turn against me.”

Speaking publicly for first time since his resignation in November – Mugabe describes the events that led him to step down as a change of government that overhauled a system that he had worked hard for.