The son of farmers, he was a hardened freedom fighter by 16, trained as a lawyer and rose to become chief of his new country’s fearsome intelligence service. Known as the “Crocodile,” he once explained the nickname by saying: “It strikes at the appropriate time.”

Emmerson Mnangagwa, the vice president of Zimbabwe until he was fired last week, now stands to become its new leader, after the military took President Robert Mugabe into custody early Wednesday morning and plunged the southern African nation into uncertainty.

What role Mr. Mnangagwa, 75, played in what appears to have been a coup by his military allies is not yet known, but officials and observers of his rise to power say he shares some of Mr. Mugabe’s traits: He is power-hungry, corrupt and a master of repression.



“His ruthlessness is legion,” said Peter Fabricius, a South African journalist and one of many observers who fear that Zimbabwe is exchanging one strongman for another.