The Mujuru faction is finished so what next? That
is the billion dollar question that will engage the nation now.
Mugabe's political strength up to now was bases
on his ability to play one faction of Zanu PF against the other(s) in which he,
with no faction of his own, was then seen as the compromise candidate capable
of uniting the warring factions. Sitting on the fence in calm weather is one
thing but do so in the tabulate times, arising from his advanced age and ill
health and thus the real possibility that he may drop dead any minute, is
another matter.
You will never see a monkey sitting on a fence
with gale force winds blowing.
Full marks to Mugabe he did pick the winning Mnangagwa
faction when push came to shove but he is not naïve not to know that within the
new political set up he is now weak and powerless. He and his wife have been
trying to bolster their own positions in the new political reality by Mugabe
almost desperate attempt to rehabilitate the likes of Didymus Mutasa from the
discredited Mujuru factions so Mugabe can have other power base still left in
the central committee and politburo to counter the Mnangagwa block.
It is widely believed that it is Grace Mugabe who
is pushing had for Edna Madzongwe to be appointed VP to replace Mujuru ahead of
Oppah Muchinguri just to take some sting out of the Mnangagwa-Jonathan
Moyo-Oppah Muchinguri (3M) axis of power that has now emerged.
Most members from the former PF Zapu grouping
have sided with the Mujuru faction but except for one or two like Jabulani
Sibanda most have been careful to take no sides. The likes of Simon Khaya Moyo
have been careful to follow where Robert Mugabe led them with as much passion
as a turkey in a Christmas Dinner planning committee. The ascendency of the 3M
axis has made Professor Moyo the most powerful political leader from the
Matebeleland region eclipsing Simon Khaya Moyo. The only thing the two share in
common is the ambition to be VP and the surname!
The best solution for the nation would for Mugabe
to announce he will step down and hand over power to Mnangagwa in say two
months, at the most. Mnangagwa will there emerge out of the party congress as
the elected new party leader with Muchinguri and Professor J Moyo as his two
VPs. It would be good for the party to have some people with some brains for
once after all the decades of deadwood VPs!
Mnangagwa will allow Grace to take up a seat in
parliament or senate and appoint her into some ministerial positions. He will
let the Mugabes keep all their looted including the Blue Roof Palace and whilst
Mugabe is still alive his wife will have some space and time to bed in
consolidate her position.
The solution Mugabe would want and is stubborn
enough to try to impose is for him to still remain leader of the party and
government with Edna Madzongwe and Simon Khaya Moyo as his two VPs. The
prospect of another year or more of the 3M axis playing second fiddle to yet
another Mujuru type brainless busy-body in the form of Edna Madzongwe must be
as appealing to them as a dish of dog vomit!
The two biggest problems with Mugabe remaining in
power are that it still does not answer the big central problem of succession
uncertainty, the root cause of this political crisis in the first place. The
centre of political power has definitely shifted in favour of the 3M axis and
for Mugabe to shut all three out of the presidium is sheer madness. The 3M will
be scrutinising every move Mugabe makes for fear he is up to some last minute
dirty trick to shoulder them out of power.
A lot has happened in Zanu PF in these last few
months and the party and the nation it has ruled with an iron fist all these
decades are yearning for some certainty, end all this uncertainty of a corrupt
and tyrannical dotting old man hanging on to power. The nation has reached the
point where many people now feel the nation will never move on until Mugabe is
dead and buried; they are literally praying for his death!
There is a time for everything, there is a time to
stand and fight and a time to turn and run; a wise man knows what is called
for! If Mugabe plays hard ball now, when he is weak and feeble, then the 3M may
well decide enough is enough; instead of pitching the normal cricket ball they may
well fire a cannon ball!
11 comments:
WHITE former commercial farmers who lost land during a programme of violent seizures that began in 2000 will be compensated for improvements to the properties when the country has funds available, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa has said.
Why should the ordinary taxpayer pay for when they and the white farmers are the victims of this lawlessness and thuggery in that it triggered the economic meltdown the still going on to this day. The white farmers must sue the individuals who took over their farms and benefited from all the improvements they had made.
The nation is broke and so the white farmers will have to wait for generations whereas many of the individuals who took over the farms are filthy rich, multimillionaires some of them.
Mnangagwa has overturned Mujuru's dominance in eight out of the ten provinces not by making himself more popular but by fighting dirty. Zanu PF is not a democratic party playing the power game by the rules, it is a party of thugs and the only rule that count is there are no rules.
Mnangagwa and Mugabe realised that they had to stop Mujuru and so they made factionalism not just a crime treason! All those supporting Mujuru were guilty of factionalism and all those supporting Mugabe and Mnangagwa were not guilty of anything since the later was considered the original Zanu PF and therefore not a faction. The difference between the two groups is no more subtle than calling a hyena a springbok just because it rolled in springbok dung.
Hyenas roll in the springbok's dung to mask their own scent for better hunting. However the day the other clan members decide to gang up on one of their own, they will all swear he might have looked like a hyena but it was his smell that proved he was in fact springbok that looked like a hyena – just fooled them and, of course, they were too smart to be so easily fooled!
What is really surprising here is that the Mujuru faction members were so naive not to have expected Mnangagwa and Mugabe to play dirty, especially when they all saw what happened to Tsvangirai and his equally naive and incompetent MDC friends in last year's elections.
Grace Mugabe's "naivety and beerhall conduct", as you rightly called it has ruled her out of contention. Beyond accusing Mujuru of being corrupt and screeching at everyone for not paying attention to her, Grace had nothing else to say. There will be no more bussed in crowds to her Mazoe Orphanage sanctu-ary, even the paid crowd is sick and tired of stupid charade.
If Mugabe makes the mistake of imposing Grace on the 3M then they will see to it that she gets a long rope with which to hang herself. She will no doubt have people like Patrick Zhuwao, Gideon Gono and Chinos, people she can bully but who, like her, are empty drums. The 3M will pretend not to notice the suicide and will only step up to take the crown when thrashing, kicking and urinating has stopped and she is as dead as a door nail!
@hapana
I agree, Mnangagwa will have to dish out a lot of goods to satisfy all those in his camp who expect little less. The reality is that the nation is broke, all the white owned farms are gone and so there is very little for him to give away. He will have no choice but to kick out many of the Mujuru supporters to create some slack for himself but also to weaken them.
Mnangagwa will not want a blood bath with his former Zanu PF friends, if he can avoid. If he decides to keep the snakes he will see to it that they fangs are pulled out. Mujuru will no doubt use her vast wealth to start a political party or finance any opposition. Mnangagwa will want to take away that financial muscle from her!
The 3M's biggest challenge is going to be the economy; there is absolutely nothing they can do to rig economic recovery. None of their dirty tricks will work against the ill effects of corruption and the international community wary of the regime's reputation as a lawless one!
@Vamoose
PF Zapu have first call on the second VP position and they are not to be easily fogged off by Mugabe's gender equality nonsense. Even the country's feminist have to admit that appointing Mai Mujuru has not helped the women of Zimbabwe in any way.
Mugabe wanted a useless VP he can bully around just as he bullied Muzenda and Mujuru was the perfect candidate. The whole nation has paid dearly for having useless leaders in power; how anyone would fail to see that in the name of gender balance is a mystery!
You have the wrong end of the stick! The dog-eat-dog fighting is within Zanu PF, the corrupt and murderous regime that has ruined the economy, rigged elections and murdered over 30 000 of our people. Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs are the hyenas who have terrorised the nation all these last 34 years and we, the ordinary Zimbabweans, are nothing more than the hunted.
We certainly do not want the fighting to stop, let them fight; our greatest wish is that at the end of the day all the thugs will be dead or, at the very least, considerably weakened - enough to allow us to reassert our rights and freedoms!
Whilst Mugabe remained strong with all his tyrannical powers there was no such thing as coming "together and build the country for everyone to live comfortable," you are talking about. He and his thugs were hyenas and you do not put hyenas in the same pen with goats!
It has taken the defeat of the Mujuru faction for Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuru, for example, to finally talk on a "none partisan" Police Force. A good start! He would not arrest VP Mujuru for corruption because she is from his area and also because they were partners in crime. Clearly he still requires some 'fine tuning' but that will come with the arrest of VP Mujuru, for example, sending a clear message that no one is above the law! But that cannot be done when the dictatorship is strong, united and ruthless. The infighting will weaken it and therefore, please let them fight - I insist!
@ Business
What Zimbabwe need is not fresh blood but fresh ideas. God knows we plenty of the fresh blood; in last years elections there were no fewer than 28 political parties - not counting independent candidates but political parties - who contested the elections. They all to the man and woman promised economic prosperity and democracy and they all to the individual man and woman did not have a clue how they would achieve that or did they care about that. All they cared about is getting on the gravy train.
The candidates were lucky in that the electorate did not have the foggiest idea what needed to be done to deliver the economic prosperity and the free and just society the nation is dying for. Not a clue. All the electorate have done is grown wary of these politicians but their economic misery has forced them to pick one candidate or party and vote for him/her and hope for the best. They might as well have closed their eyes or tossed a coin.
Just to prove how inept the voters are, many of them will vote for Tsvangirai again although he has already proven to be breathtakingly incompetent already.
Given such an unbelievable incompetent electorate so incompetent they will elect the same village idiot two or three times and not be any wiser; what good would an Sir Isaac Newton of a political leader with all his volumes of brilliant ideas to them if they are going to vote for a village idiot.
No it is not the "fresh political blood and ideas" Zimbabwe needs to get out of this hell-hole the nation finds itself but an electorate that is willing to stop for just one minute and think and not always follow blindly like sheep. I used to think that economic hardships would force Zimbabweans to think but now I am not so sure.
I hate to admit it but there it is; I think Zimbabwe will never ever recover to anywhere near what it was economically in 1980. It had the potential to develop and prosper far beyond the 1980 level but it also had the potential to sink to the nauseating depths of economic and political chaos we see all around today. Many of us never imagined we would sink this low.
It is lot more difficult to build than to destroy and having destroyed it is even harder to rebuild! Mugabe had a nation full of hope and desire to succeed to build the nation with and he was starting with many things done for him already but failed. To rebuild what he has destroyed one has a nation that has lost hope already and with many things in ruins!
The solution is to get the people to believe in themselves and to think for themselves and to stop looking for the easy solutions to a problem whose only solution is hard work!
Mugabe has amended the Zanu PF constitution to allow him to appoint his own deputies, who until now were elected by members.
Mugabe has always enjoyed absolute power as he alone had the power to appoint and fire all ministers, security chiefs, senior civil servants, ambassadors, etc. He has always changed the nation's constitution if it did not suit him or simply disregard the law. He has blatantly rigged elections denying ordinary Zimbabweans a meaningful say in the governance of the country.
Allowing his party members to elect his deputies was an anomaly and he has corrected it.
Now it can be said that Mugabe has everyone beholden to him and to do his bidding; he has absolute power!
@ Rovambira
35 years of ruin and brutal oppression which are now ending in the chaos of dog-eat-dog fight within the party itself.
Mugabe rigged the 2013 national elections and now he has just rigged Zanu PF's own elections. The real challenge for him is rigging economic recovery and end this on-going economic meltdown!
The problem of economic meltdown is real and, sadly for the tyrant, he cannot rewrite the Adam Smith's basic economics laws because they are universal. If he can rig economic recovery only then will his grip on power be secure.
@ Musiyanwa
Mugabe and all his thugs cannot cheat the economy and it sure has no respect for all his dirty tricks and tyrannical powers. They will be forced to see the economic suffering brought on by the economic melt-down because hundreds of thousands of them are poor too like the rest of us.
The dog-eat-dog fighting has been savage precisely because all those Mujuru supporters who have lost out will be living in abject poverty in a matter of months. Wait and you will see!
@Pilgrim
Chihuri has dismissed as nonsense all overture calling for a none-partisan Police Force but now that he is on the receiving end of the Zanu PF juggernaut he will be only too glad to see any demand for police reforms!
“They are long overdue!” he will say. “Where do I sign?” And he will be taking the demand to everyone asking them to sign.
Until now he would have had you arrested or harassed and now he is the one who will be making you a cup of tea!
“We have done a lot of work which we need to finalise to clarify the indigenisation laws," Chinamasa said. “It’s to clarify that it’s not a one-size-fits-all. There will be a sector-by-sector approach.”
The indigenisation law itself is stupid motivated by greed and not national interest. Zanu PF wants the ruling elite, who have failed to make a viable success in everything else without direct or indirect subsidies now to be fostered on anyone who comes into the country so they could live off the investors like ticks on a cow. The investor does all the work and the Zanu PF cronies will cream off the profit. No investor in their right mind would accept that!
Even if the regime was to finally scrap this stupid law, no investor will trust them to hon-our that!
In the last year Zimbabwe a misery 4% of the Direct Foreign Investment Mozambique got; this is the price the nation has paid for this Zanu PF intransigence!
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