Mugabe
has returned his top-dog position as Zanu PF leader for over 40 years and he has
kept Zanu PF, by hook and by crook, in power for all the 36 years since
independence because he is the grand master of subtlety and cloak-and-dagga political
intrigue. He has had an amazingly long and successful inning; still there are
signs that after years of weaving a complex and intricate spider’s web he is a
spider caught in its own web!
In 2014
Mugabe, through his wife (he has always had others do his dirty work for him),
turned on the then VP Joice Mujuru accusing her of being lazy, incompetent,
corrupt, of factionalism and plotting to assassinate him. Mujuru is lazy,
incompetent and corrupt; he knew all this back in 2004 when he promoted her to
be VP. Indeed he was always surrounded himself with the most corrupt and
incompetent men and women he could get because they posed the least threat to
his ambition to remain top-dog for live.
As for
factionalism and assassination charges, that was pure political nonsense to
fool the politically naïve and gullible. Zanu PF was going to hold an elective
congress in December 2014 and Mai Mujuru, who was vying for the VP position,
had garnered the support of 8 out of 10 provinces; her main challenger for the
post, Emmerson Mnangagwa, had the remaining 2 provinces. Mugabe; who had always
managed to deny the party members a meaningful say in the running of the party
by denying them the chance to elect party leaders, he had always appointed them
instead; feared an elected Mujuru would dilute his own powers and so decided to
stop the elections going ahead. Accusing
her of factionalism was nonsense because there is nothing wrong with one
seeking the support of others in upcoming elections.
As for the plot to assassinate Mugabe; each
time the tyrant felt his hold on power was under real threat, the opponent was
accused of plotting to stage a coup or assassination. The treason charges were
then used to justify the ruthless crashing of opponent. Once the threat is neutralized
the treason charges would be frizzle out; the same has happened with the Mujuru
case.
But as
soon as the task of “baby dumping”, as Mugabe’s wife called the purge of Mujuru et al; Mugabe went after Mnangagwa, he
was now the new threat to his scheme to remain life president and pass on the
presidency to his wife, Grace. Mnangagwa, just like Mujuru in 2014, was too accused
of factionalism.
Last
Wednesday President Mugabe condemned factionalism when he addressed a group of
Zanu PF Women’s League members and repeated the same message during the
politburo meeting. The ruthless purge of Mai Mujuru and her supporters in 2014
was supposed to cure the party of factionalism, so where has the new faction come
from again?
“In
2014 we went around denouncing factionalism but what we did not know was that
we were empowering the other (Mnangagwa faction). So, we are saying to the
other faction; stop it!” Grace told her audience at her latest “Meet the
People” rally; answering the question of the genesis of the new faction.
“Do not
take us for fools. They will not take over from Mugabe. I will rather put him
in a wheelbarrow to work because we have realised that those we thought were
being groomed as leaders are sell-outs. We no longer have confidence in them,”
Grace charged.
Mnangagwa
and his supporters constituted the new threat to Mugabe’s plan to remain in
office until death and then hand over power to his wife Grace. So Mugabe called
off the factional war on Wednesday and
two days later his wife declares war on the “sell-outs”; proof there is no intention
of ending the war but intensifying it instead.
In
short, Mugabe’s call for an end of the factional wars tearing Zanu PF is just
variation of his political giving with one hand and making a big song and dance
about it whilst stealing even more with the other hand; waving the olive branch
in one hand with the concealed assassin’s dagga in the other.
“Mugabe
anorova imbwa akaviga mupini!” as one would say in Shona.
"You
can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time,
but you cannot fool all the people all the time," said Abraham Lincoln,
one of America’s greatest leaders. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, Mugabe has
fooled all the people for a good long “some of the time”, 36 years to be exact,
and now he has ran out of time; he cannot fool anyone any more.
The G40
faction Mugabe created to wrestle power from Mnangagwa has failed to impress.
The G40
faction has no credible leader; Grace Mugabe lost credibility soon after she
bust on the political stage in 2014 when she started making her wild allegation
against Joice Mujuru. The nation knows that she is after power and her shrill
“sell-outs” cries are fooling no one..
“People
nicknamed me Mazowe crush, you think I’m stupid, I do not know what Mazowe
crush means?” admitted Grace on Friday.
”Amai
vanoda kutererwa; mukasateerera amai vanotswinya!” she continued, chiding the
crowd for not paying attention to her wittering. (Mother wants you to listen;
if you do not listen she will sulk!) The restless crowd continued to ignore
her.
The
people have been attending these rallies for the free hand outs at the end of
the day. Grace distributed 531 tonnes of maize, 100 tonnes of rice, Tractors, Internet
equipment etc., etc. at the end of the rally.
If
Zimbabwe’s next elections are free, fair and credible; which is looking increasingly
unlikely given the incompetent opposition failed to get any GPA reforms implemented
during the GNU and are doing the same again post the 2013 rigged elections;
none of the Zanu PF factions, including Mujuru’s People First Movement, would
win them.
Elections
with no reforms will give the Zanu PF faction in power a clear advantage; still
by purging the Mujuru faction, rigging the elections will not be easy. If the
G40 was to purge the Mangagwa faction too, it is doubtful if the faction will
be able to pull this off alone!
Zanu PF’s
dog-eat-dog factional fighting now pitting the Mnangagwa faction against Grace’s
G40 faction is going to continue with the latter doing all the barking but too
weak to deliver the killer bite. Mugabe cannot call-off his Chihuahua G40 pack now;
it is too late for a tactical withdrawal. As long as Mugabe is alive the
Mnangagwa faction cannot fight back G40 faction. So Zanu PF is imploding and
there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop it, not even the grand master
of political intrigue, Robert Gabriel Mugabe himself!
5 comments:
Ngwena is only getting a taste of some of the medicine he has dished out to others as Mugabe's right-hand man for donkey years. He knew the accusations against Joice Mujuru, for example, were lies; why did he fail to complain then!
Of all the stupid things Ngwena can do resigning would be the worst thing. He has played his part in mudding Zimbabwe's political water; he is a crocodile; to resign and be caught out on land far from the water will mean sure defeat.
G40 are making all the noise; they are nothing more than a dog harassing an elephant it is the dog that fears for its life and not the elephant. The day Mugabe kicks the bucket , G40 will all be running for cover; all Mnangagwa must do now is bide his time and wait for Mugabe’s departure. Ngwena has waited for 36 years he can wait a few more years; Mugabe has been stumbling and falling with ever increasing frequency and one of these fine days he will not get up again, even with the expensive medical attention from Singapore!
@ Nomusa
I do not believe any thinking Zimbabweans would not want meaningful change if they were sure they would get it. People have risked life and limp to vote for Tsvangirai and friends only to be betrayed.
Mugabe's apologists are the ones peddling this nonsense that people at home must not push for regime change and an end to the corruption because those in the diaspora will benefit. They are hoping the people will be so engrossed in this diaspora notion they will forget that they are the ones who are suffering the most from the corrupt and tyrannical regime and thus they are the ones to gain the most from change.
Indeed the economic situation has now reached the point it if a matter of life and death; by demanding change it is their own lives that the people in Zimbabwe will be saving and not those who have escaped the chaos!
The really challenge here is to educate the people on the merits of the GPA reforms and why they will deliver change and not the disappointments of the pasts. I believe the people are ignorant but they are not stupid!
The war vets must accept that they have been used to promote individual selfish interests at the expense of national interests. They sold out in helping defend Zanu PF's no-regime-change agenda and denying the ordinary people their right to free and fair elections, for example.
War vets must now decide to either return to their liberation war commitment and fight for freedom and liberty of all Zimbabweans or be used as politicians' storm troopers to harass and intimidate and even kill innocent civilians. The nation knows that the last 16 years particularly most of the war vets have been against freedom and liberty.
People like Chris Mutsvangwa have been the foot stool of selfish political interests. Has he learnt the lesson?
War vet can hunt with the oppressive politicians or run with the ordinary people.
War Vets like Chris Mutsvangwa, Chinos, Jabulani Sibanda, etc. have sold out their souls to the devil in that they have become the tyrannical regime's storm troopers in helping Mugabe impose his no-regime-change agenda. One hopes that the events of the last two years have brought some of the war vet to their senses. War vet are supposed to have fought the war to liberate the people and not for them to be the new prison guards of the new oppressors!
People like Chris Mutsvangwa must throw out their usual war vet rhetoric claiming they are extra special. Mugabe encouraged it to suit his selfish political ends and idiots like Mutsvangwa took it up not knowing Mugabe was using them.
War vet must now decide either to be with the people or to be with the tyrannical politicians; either run with the hare or hunt with the hounds; they cannot do both!
"51 percent doesn't make sense. If a mining company invests $100 million in infrastructure on the ground the resource they want underground will be having a value much higher than the investment. Shareholding for non-indigenous entities must be calculated on the basis of the infrastructure put on the ground in relation to the value of the resource in the ground, but for the time being we'll continue using the 51 percent but we want to go to 80-90 percent because that's the true value of our resource," said Zhuwao.
"I say this because mining companies remain stubborn and intransigent and refuse to recognise that they don't own a resource. All they own are pieces of steel and infrastructure on the ground that are worth only a fraction of the resource that they extract and leave us only with holes." –
Zanu PF rigged the 2013 elections and is therefore illegitimate and hence have no authority to pass any laws including this obnoxious indigenisation law. The soon Zimbabwe can implemented the GPA reforms and hold fresh free and fair elections the sooner the nation can start the task of rebuilding this nation!
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