Zimbabwe war veterans have publicly said they want two powerful members of Zanu PF, both close to First Lady Grace Mugabe, to be expelled from the party.
This is the latest sign of ever-deepening faction fights within Zanu-PF about who will succeed President Robert Mugabe. He will be 92 in two weeks and says he will die in office, while Grace Mugabe says if he becomes too frail to walk she will push him around in a wheel chair so he can continue to rule.
War veterans say they want Saviour Kasukuwere, Zanu-PF’s national commissar and local government minister, and Jonathan Moyo, higher education minister to be barred from this week’s politburo meeting and expelled from the party.
Both men are close to Grace, and reports in various Zimbabwe privately-owned and state media, indicate the two men oppose vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa to succeed Mugabe.
Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association, ZNLWVA, secretary-general, Victor Matemadanda, told veterans at a weekend meeting in central Zimbabwe that the two, Kasukuwere and Moyo, should be expelled from the party.
He says war veterans were solidly behind their chairman, Christopher Mutsvangwa, who has been having a public row with Moyo.
“These people think they can create a rift between President Mugabe and Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa,” he says.
He and other veterans of the 1970s liberation war say that Kasukuwere and Moyo have dragged the security sector into internal fights within Zanu-PF.
“They want to create non-existent tiffs between war veterans and the President and his deputy so that they strategically position themselves to rule this country. They have dragged the police, intelligence and soldiers into their shenanigans and stupid ploys.”
Grace Mugabe, assisted by Kasukuwere and Moyo, succeeded in forcing the expulsion from Zanu-PF of former vice president Joice Mujuru, who is now reportedly behind the formation of a new political organisation, People First.
