Zimbabwe's former vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa has been fired from the ruling Zanu-PF party, reports said on Thursday.
According to NewsDay, Zanu-PF party spokesperson Simon Khaya Moyo said that the decision was endorsed during a politburo meeting held on Wednesday.
This came two days after Mnangagwa was fired by President Robert Mugabe, 93, from government for various allegations that included undermining the nonagenarian.
A report by the state-owned "Herald" newspaper said that Mnangagwa's expulsion from the revolutionary party followed "recommendations that were made by all the party's 10 provincial co-ordinating committees".
Frustration has been growing in the once-prosperous southern African nation as the economy has deteriorated under Mugabe, who has been in power since independence from white minority rule in 1980, reports indicated.
Mnangagwa was the more prominent of the country's two vice-presidents and had been part of Mugabe's cabinet since independence. He was said to have enjoyed the support of military generals and war veterans. His critics viewed him as ruthless, because he was in charge of state security when Mugabe unleashed a North Korean-trained brigade to crush dissent in western Zimbabwe in the 1980s.