Academic and Biographer Miles Tendi has written four reasons why the late General Solomon Mujuru did not want President Emmerson Mnangagwa to assume the post of Presidency.
Tendi was responding to ZANU PF Secretary for Administration Obert Mpofu who said Mujuru mobilized ZANU PF officials to stop Mnangagwa but dod not give a reason for doing so.
Read Tendi’s response below:
Obert Mpofu shies away from stating why Solomon Mujuru was determined to prevent an Emmerson Mnangagwa presidency. Mujuru had four reasons for opposing Mnangagwa’s bid to become president of Zimbabwe. Here goes:
1. Mnangagwa never saw active combat as a ZANLA guerrilla & his role in larger nationalist politics was marginal. For Solomon Mujuru, Mnangagwa’s meagre liberation struggle credentials disqualified him from seeking to determine the direction of ZANU’s succession politics.
2. One of the things Solomon Mujuru criticised Mugabe for was his hard heartedness, which he felt had been bad for Zimbabwe. Mujuru saw comparable hard heartedness in Mnangagwa and was of the view that Zimbabwe needed a break from a cycle of callous political leadership.
3. Solomon Mujuru and Emmerson Mnangagwa clashed over some business interests in the 1990s, most famously in the ZIMASCO affair. These differences over business resulted in very bad blood between them.
4. Mujuru had an injudicious belief the highly educated & bright make the best leaders. This conviction partly explains his misguided support for Mugabe in the 1970s. Mujuru believed there were better educated, brighter, ZANU politicians than ED who could become president.
On Solomon Mujuru’s reverence for education: when the ZANU vice presidency became vacant in 2004, he opposed his wife Joice’s candidature. He believed Sydney Sekeramayi was more accomplished.
Solomon Mujuru backed his wife for the job after the Sekeramayi bid failed. Mujuru, opportunistically, rode a feminist wave in ZANU PF for a woman vice president so as to block Emmerson Mnangagwa from ever securing the vice presidency. Male dominated power politics at play!Source – Miles Tendi
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