Mugabe imposed provincial leaders to stop Mujuru becoming VP but that started fires he cannot put out!

When Mugabe carried out his staged-managed vote-of-no-confidence in provincial leaders to rig Zanu PF’s party elections which Mai Mujuru was set to win he achieved his primary objective of stealing electoral victory but created a problem of insubordination at provincial level and below which threatening to get out of control.    

At the beginning of August 2013, four months before the party’s elective December 2013 congress, Mai Mujuru’s supporters were in the majority in eight out of the ten provinces plus the Youth League. The other faction led by now VP Mnangagwa had two provinces and the Women’s League. Each of the provinces and two Leagues were entitled to nominate a portion of congress delegate members and central committee members who then constituted the election college to elect the three individuals who would be the two Vice Presidents and the chairperson of the party. It was a mathematical certainty that Mai Mujuru would retain her post as one of the two VP. Mugabe and Mnangagwa did not want her as VP and so had to do something quick smart!

The plan to unseat Mujuru was simple enough; accuse her of “factionalism” and plotting to assassinate Mugabe. All the senior party members like Rugare Gumbo and Didymus Mutasa who had supported her bid for VP position were either haunted out of the party or haunted into silence. The provincial leaders, especially the chairperson position, were forced out of power through stage-managed vote-of-no-confidence by members bussed in for the purpose. New interim provincial executives were then appointed to replace the elected Mujuru supportive executives.

It was the new provincial executives which then nominated congress delegate and supervised the election of central committee members. Known Mujuru supporters included Mai Mujuru herself and then cabinet ministers were barred from putting their names forward for these nominated or elected positions.

Just in case the move to keep Mujuru supporters away from the congress did not succeed, Mugabe and Mnangagwa had a plan B. They changed the party’s constitution taking away congress’s power to elect the two VP positions; it was now the party’s first secretary who also becomes national President who would appoint whoever he/she placed.

The replacement of the provincial leadership with an imposed one delivered the immediate objective of ensuring congress, the central committee and the politburo – composed of members selected by Mugabe alone from the central committee pool – will have no Mujuru loyalists. No doubt Mugabe and Mnangagwa must have expected some murmuring after breaking the rules so blatantly to get what they wanted; the party is notorious for its disregard of the law and riding roughshod over other people’s basic rights and freedoms, still many of the Zanu PF members who founded themselves or the receiving end of a rigged electoral process never thought Mugabe would ever play such dirty tricks on them. They got a lot more than a few murmurings!

Whilst many of the purged leaders started running scared immediately others like Rugare Gumbo and Didymus Mutasa have decided they will not gone down quietly. Their fight back has had no meaningful impact because they tried to take the moral high ground and attach Mugabe’s undemocratic tactics and failed economic policies. The Zimbabwe public dismissed them as hypocrites for seeing these faults now that they have lost their positions in the Zanu PF dictatorship but never said a word about all the corruption, vote rigging and political violence and murders until now.

It is the fear of the disloyalty of the party members below the provincial level who have cause to feel cheated since they are the ones who were denied any meaningful say in those who now represent them at central committee level. Mugabe has since moved quickly and decisively to dismiss most known Mujuru loyalist from cabinet but has been powerless to act against MPs and Senators since these are elected positions. The last thing Mugabe wants is to have these MPs or Senators forming a parallel political power base challenging his imposed leadership.

So how to pull the political rag, of grass-root membership support at district and cell level, from under the remaining Mujuru loyalists without appearing to be doing so? That is the big worry for Mugabe and, it seems, he has no solution.

Ever since the imposed provincial leadership the party members in one province at least, Mashonaland East, have pointedly rejected the provincial leadership imposed on them just before last year’s congress. The party’s Political Commissar, Minister Kasukuwere, has been forced to sack on mass the imposed provincial leadership and appoint another 15-member interim committee.

Speaking during the meeting Kasukuwere said the province should come up with new structures, adding that a new substantive provincial executive should be in place by April.

If Mai Mujuru had grass-root support, it seems that she did, then how is Mugabe going to rig that, is the million dollar question?

Of course everyone wants to be the leader but in a country where holding public office has become the only route to wealth and influence the fight for power has been fierce. The country’s worsening economic situation in which being in power is the only way to escape abject poverty; the fight for power has become a dog-eat-dog affair. The infighting in Zanu PF is at all levels is set to get worse, much worse and, it seems, there is little Mugabe can do about it.

“Kasukuwere is on a nationwide tour aimed at extinguishing the party’s never-ending fires at national, provincial and district levels — following on-going votes of no confidence that have led to the controversial suspension of scores of party bigwigs on account of their perceived support for Mujuru, and that camp’s alleged plot to illegally oust President Robert Mugabe from power,” reported the Daily News.

The report is spot-on the infighting in Zanu PF constitute “never-ending fires”. The country’s worsening economic situation fuelling those fires!