By - election pressure forcing political funabmulist Mugabe to perform with no safety net!

Zanu PF People First fronted by former Zanu PF bigwigs, Joice Mujuru, Rugare Gumbo and Didymus Mutasa, has reportedly sponsored candidates to contest in the forthcoming 10 June 2015 parliamentary by-elections as independent candidates. Mugabe will be under great pressure to make sure none of them win to ensure this new kid-on-the-block, People First, does not even get a look in.

 

Ordinarily Mugabe would not have had anything to worry about whether his party lost all the by-elections because his party still has more than the two-third majority he needs. His problem here is that out of the 160 Zanu PF MPs 100 or so of them are believed to be from the Mujuru camp.  Mugabe has had to trade carefully since he purged Mujuru and 16 others of her supporters from cabinet; he did not want to spook the MPs and force them to take Mujuru’s side.

 

After the ruthless cull of VP Mujuru and her supporters from cabinet last year, the winning Mnangagwa faction was itching to press their advantage and wanted all the senior Mujuru supporters, including the 100 or so MPs, fired from the party. Mugabe has had to ask them to be patient.

 

So far only Didymus Mutasa and his nephew Mliswa are the only two former Zanu PF MPs who have been fired from the party triggering a parliamentary recall of their seat. Former VP Mujuru lost her MP seat under the pretext that she should have given it up when she was appointed VP after the rigged 2013 elections just as VP Mnangagwa was giving up his with his appointment to replace her. She would have been forced to give up her seat anyway because she too has since been fired from the party.

 

The recall of the 14 MDC-renewal MPs and the two fired Zanu PF MPs has presented Mugabe with the golden opportunity to start bolstering his own position in parliament by making sure all these seats are won by members loyal to his faction. The fact that the Mujuru faction has candidates contesting for these by-elections seats must have Mugabe really worried now.

 

Zanu PF People First with their potentially rebellious 100 or so MPs have posed a real political threat to his hold on power. He has been forced to trade carefully since the December 2014 purge of Mujuru and others, for someone whose trademark has been to ride rough-shod over everyone without a care in the world, to now have to retrain himself again – after the GNU imposed restrains – is what is making him stumble and fall!

 

Mugabe knows that if these People First sponsored candidates were to perform very well in the 10 June 2015 by-elections then he will need the wheelchair from there on because his own legs will just too feeble to carry him.

 

A win of the Zanu People First members who, up to now, have been running scarred, will have them singing “Nothing is going to stop us now! We are on the move! Move it! Move it!”

 

So Mugabe is under great pressure to stop the People First lot before they ever start but that is easier said than done.

 

It is one thing telling the Headmen and Chiefs to frog match the villagers to the polling stations when one is sure these local leaders are party loyalists through and through. Now that there are clearly two Zanu PF factions, who is to know how many of these corrupt leaders have decided their future lies with the Mujuru faction?

 

There are other dirty tricks Mugabe could deploy to secure a victory for his faction but there is the see the Margret Dongo factor to be considered.

 

In the 1995 Harare South parliamentary elections Mrs Dongo lost the initial vote to a Zanu PF candidate. She successfully challenged the result on the grounds that the vote had been rigged; as a former Zanu PF MP and CIO she had inside information on how the vote had been rigged complete with sworn affidavits from those who had been collared to play a part in the vote rigging.

 

Mrs Dongo went on to win the re-run of the Harare South seat earning for herself the licence to call Mugabe a vote rigging tyrant. It has been the next best thing to James Bond’s licence to kill and she has used it at every opportunity!

 

The factional dog-eat-dog in Zanu PF today has divided the party down the middle; there are staunch Mujuru loyalists is every State Institution down to village level, she will have a lot more inside informers than Mrs Dongo ever had. She will only need one or two of them to spill the beans on how the by-elections were rigged and Mugabe would have open a flood that is sure to sweep him into the political abyss.

 

How President Mugabe has managed to stay in power for 35 years, given that he has been a total disaster and a curse to the nation, is a great mystery. Yes he has had the great fortune of having some of the most corrupt and incompetent individual in his own party, Zanu PF, and the opposition parties as his challengers; still his was a remarkable achievement.

 

However of all his many terms in office this term 2013 to 2018 will be Mugabe’s toughest. Yes he is very cunning political fox but for him to walk the political tightrope with no balancing stick and safety net (cheating his former Zanu PF colleagues with lot of vote-rigging experienced will not be easy) and with raging hurricane weather (the worsening economic meltdown) whipping his rope like a skipping rope, is asking for too much.

 

It will be remarkable if Mugabe stays on the tightrope for the rest of the year much less to the end of 2018 and then win a new term. He would truly be a remarkable political funambulist indeed; I will remark on it myself!