Who ordered the arrest of General Chiwenga?
Opinion & Columnist Zimbabwe

Who ordered the arrest of General Chiwenga?

By Robert Sigauke

THE famous fugitive of justice has undeniably succeeded in creating hype and momentum before the launch of his book which supposedly seeks to shed light on how the 2018 elections were stolen.

It is of public record that former Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo is not in Zimbabwe and by his own admission, his Excellgate book could not have been possible without the contribution of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) officers and commissioners.

Moyo lost his lofty place in the country’s society, he is a bitter man, and can say and do anything to throw mud at those responsible for his fall, and so will anyone who thinks the government has failed.

Moyo should know better from his legal studies that hearsay evidence is excluded as credible evidence due to its very nature that it has high risk of being twisted to suit the interests of the sayer. Moyo cannot go to town about what a Zec officer told him, nor the fact that it has been corroborated, Zec officers are people too, with political sides too.

In his soon to be released book, which I am not going to buy, he sets the record straight that Chihuri did not order that Chiwenga be arrested. If the chief of police did not give the order then who did, considering that Mugabe also washed his hands on that issue?

In any modern State a high profile figure like the army chief cannot be arrested without the tacit approval or at the very least, knowledge of the head of State. In the book Two Weeks in November, Douglas Rogers writes that when Chiwenga got to KG IV from the airport where members of a special unit within the police had attempted to arrest him, he made a call to Mugabe to ask why he had ordered that he be arrested.

Mugabe’s response was, “I do not know what you are talking about.” Read more about this incident on: DRAMA AT HARARE AIRPORT AS GENERAL CHIWENGA LANDS FROM CHINA.

If Chihuri did not give the order, and the head of State did not, then who did? The narrative that Moyo is trying to suggest is that the “arrest” was stage managed and nothing of that sort would have happened genuinely so. Jonathan Moyo must be losing his mental premises, he is old news now.

The records tell us that the State vice-president had been dismissed from his post, and from his own words, ED says a price had been put for his head. There was chaos at the border when he crossed into Mozambique as an order had been given that he must not leave the country.

His power lever, being the army chief, had given the State President an ultimatum to correct his “mistakes” and the hound-dogs opposed to the Lacoste faction had taken such remarks by Chiwenga as treasonous. In fact, there was all the reason to arrest Chiwenga.

Amidst all this, why would these strongmen need to stage-manage a simple arrest to justify the power grab they eventually did?

Moyo himself is on record to have said as early as July 2017, a coup was already underway in Zimbabwe. This thenAdvertisementmeans if this was the intelligence in the vaults of Mugabe and his hench boys, then why would they sit back and let Chiwenga run through with his treasonous coup plans?

The fact of the matter is that, there was an attempt to arrest Chiwenga at the airport, by who? Let us look at the hints: By using the elimination formula and if we have to believe it, Mugabe denied ordering the arrest, Moyo has exonerated Chihuri, saying he did not order the arrest.

Whether Chihuri knew or not, Moyo did not say, but all things equal, the chief of police must at least know when the second most powerful man in the country, being the chief of the army, is about to be arrested by those under his command.

Records have it that when the coup was at its climax, Mugabe spoke with ED over telephone while he was across the Limpopo. It is on record that Mugabe expressed surprise that ED had been dismissed as State Vice-President. It could well have been Mugabe’s last trick in the book seeing that he had been cornered, and so was trying to gain negotiation leverage. This is not likely.

What is significant is that if Mugabe did not dismiss ED, then who did. We still do not know, but what is known is that the enemies of the Lacoste faction were the biggest beneficiaries of ED’s dismissal, albeit briefly. What is also known is that G40 were these enemies, with the president’s young wife as their lever.

This lady had shown disdain for ED publicly, while Moyo himself had attacked ED and his camp at the Sapes session in Harare where he propped up Mphoko and Sekeramayi.

It is also known that Mphoko, another G40 guy but not so young as the G40 name suggests, had power to order Avondale police to release suspects who had been arrested and charged with corruption. If a non-commissioned State official, without prosecutorial, judicial or arresting powers could dare to order the police to release suspects, and it actually gets done, such a person and his group surely have the power to order the same police to arrest anyone.

I wrote in one of my past articles that all the signs were there on the ground that power had exchanged hands across town, Mugabe was all but ceremonial and not running the show anymore, hence his surprise that ED had been dismissed as State Vice-President, hence his surprise that Chiwenga had an arrest warrant haunting him.

It is mischievous, that Moyo exonerates who did not do the act, and yet keeps his motor mouth shut about who did. This is a laughable attempt to plant ideas in the minds of many to believe otherwise, inasmuch as he wants us to believe he has no case to answer with regards to Zimdef funds and of course the Swedish International Development Agency project before that. The law is kind though, you are innocent until proven guilty. But running away and not proving innocence, betrays.

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