HARARE – With the warring Zanu PF’s politburo and central committee power structures meeting in Harare today and on Friday respectively to discuss, among other issues, dozens of outstanding disciplinary cases, things don’t look good for the party’s faction loyal to embattled Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
While there has been a sense over the past few weeks that the former liberation movement would check back and reach out to all its disaffected members, in a desperate endeavour to head off the challenge posed by former Vice President Joice Mujuru’s Zimbabwe People First (ZPF), it emerged yesterday that Mnangagwa’s party foes were driving a hard bargain against his camp.
Well-placed Zanu PF sources told the Daily News that hardliners within the Generation 40 (G40) group — a party faction rabidly opposed to Mnangagwa succeeding President Robert Mugabe — were pushing for the confirmation this week of the suspension and expulsion of all of the beleaguered VP’s allies who were under the cosh in the party.
“There is no mercy for successionists. The resistance and other nonsense that has so far been put up by Team Lacoste (Mnangagwa faction) must come to and end, which is why the party leadership must endorse the expulsions of all the successionists,” a G40-aligned party official said.
It was even speculated among the VP’s camp last night that the push to have the Zanu PF National Disciplinary Committee (NDC) that is chaired by Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko to recommend the confirmation of all suspensions and expulsions to the party was allegedly a strategy to emasculate former War Veterans minister Christopher Mutsvangwa ahead of the crunch engagement between Mugabe and ex-combatants tomorrow.
Contacted for comment on all this, the party’s national spokesperson Simon Khaya Moyo said as he had not had sight of the agenda of the politburo and the central committee meetings, he could not say much, referring the Daily News to party secretary for administration Ignatius Chombo.
But as party bigwigs meet in Harare, Midlands and Mashonaland West provincial co-ordinating committees are pushing for the expulsion of party deputy national secretary for administration July Moyo and Mutsvangwa from the former liberation movement, along with several other officials aligned to Mnangagwa.
Both Zanu PF acting Midlands chairperson Tapiwa Matangaidze and Keith Guzah, who chairs the Mashonaland West provincial disciplinary committee, told the Daily News that they expected Moyo and Mutsvangwa’s cases to be finalised as recommended.
“We sat as the Mashonaland West PCC on March 20 and resolved that Mutsvangwa be expelled from the party and also be recalled from Parliament because we felt that he dismally failed to adhere to Zanu PF’s ethos. We realised that he is an unrepentant character,” Guzah said.
“The politburo will most likely expel Mutsvangwa while Moyo may get away with a suspension, but whatever happens, the consequences for the party will be too ghastly to contemplate.
“Team Lacoste is ready to disengage if one considers the work they are doing on the ground. How else do you explain a situation where a party has two structures antagonistic to each other at every level?
“We are doomed as a party if these things are not handled carefully, and the opposition is watching us with glee. We may even see them participating in subsequent by-elections to test if there is still cohesion in the party and we risk being embarrassed by them in 2018,” a central committee member, who claims neutrality in the party, said.
Meanwhile, the other alleged Team Lacoste officials who could be in soup this week include former Midlands provincial chairperson Kizito Chivamba, Gokwe-Nembudziya legislator Justice Mayor Wadyajena and his Gokwe-Kana counterpart Owen Muda Ncube, as well as war veteran Victor Matemadanda who were all booted out of their troubled province last month.
And amid all this, the stage is delicately set for a potentially explosive encounter that could radically reshape Zimbabwe’s turbulent political landscape when Mugabe meets restless war veterans in Harare tomorrow to try and iron out their deepening differences.
In a daring act of defiance on Sunday, war veterans aligned to Mnangagwa openly contradicted Mugabe saying they were “equal partners” in Zanu PF and that the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) was not just an affiliate organisation of the ruling party as the nonagenarian said on Saturday, on his return from Japan.
Speaking in an interview with the Daily News, the spokesperson of the Mnangagwa-aligned ZNLWVA formation that is led by Mutsvangwa, Douglas Mahiya, also said it was folly for anyone to think that former freedom fighters did not have a key role to play in Zanu PF.
“Just as you cannot separate Jesus from God, and cannot separate Jesus from the Holy Spirit, you cannot separate war veterans from Zanu PF. After all, we (war veterans) are the ones who introduced Zanu PF to the masses during the war of liberation.
“If someone wants to separate us from Zanu PF, I think it will be a betrayal of the liberation struggle,” Mahiya said as he unapologetically contradicted what Mugabe said at the weekend.
He said further that ex-combatants “are not supporters of Zanu PF but are members of the party”, and as such were not supposed to operate under the leadership of people they had taught politics.
“During our training as liberation fighters we were taught how to use the gun and also taught how to handle the masses in terms of politics. So you cannot say we must go under them while we are the ones who were educating them. War veterans have a big role to play in Zanu PF politics,” he added.
Prodded to comment further on the view that war veterans should play second fiddle to Zanu PF, Mahiya said this was a misunderstanding as each party needed the other, adding that one side could not dictate to the other on issues that had to do with how the party must be run.
“The issue is not about direction. As war veterans, we already have direction. However, the direction must not constantly be renewed because if you do so you will lose that direction.
“You cannot renew the direction that we had, the direction of fighting the colonial regime. We think that as war veterans we are taking the right direction. Now, it’s about how government functionality and programmes benefit the people that we fought for,” he said.
Mahiya also admitted openly that Zanu PF was “collapsing like a deck of cards” because of its seemingly unstoppable factional and succession wars.
“What we are experiencing is tantamount to total chaos in the country and total destruction of the party, and if we leave people destroying the party as war veterans we will be left with nothing at the end of the day.
“Zanu PF is being manipulated to produce a different product altogether, which is a misdirection of the liberation war. This thing is becoming tense because our former enemies have infiltrated us,” he said.-Dailynews
