Mnangagwa vanquished Grace - but the real tough opponents now await. By P Guramatunhu

“Grace Mugabe endorses Mnangagwa,” screamed the headline in Spotlight.  And the article was accompanied by a humble looking Grace bowing low to her new overlord.

The photograph speaks more eloquently – the cocky shrew was vanquished!   

Ever since Grace burst of the Zimbabwe political stage and went after Mai Mujuru with all guns blazing and then turn on Mnangagwa in the fight to be the one to succeed her husband as State president, she has been as cocky as hell. The photograph says it all – the shrew has not just been tamed, she has been completely and totally vanquished!
Whilst the Mujuru faction has tried to regroup and relaunch their bid for political power as Zim PF there is no danger of the G40 faction doing the same. This is not to say if Mnangagwa was to “baby dump” Grace, to use her phrase, there will be a shortage of political wooers. There are many political parties in Zimbabwe without even two bond coins to their name and a rich political widow like Grace will be an irresistible magnet as Joice Mujuru would readily testify!  

VP Mnangagwa should not hurry off and throw another big party to celebrate his victory over the G40 faction as he did following his appointment as VP in 2014; his victory over G40 is but a skirmish the real threat to him becoming president, at least past 2018, is coming from the economic meltdown and winning the elections.

Zimbabweans have become restless and the street protests will only get worse unless something is done to revive the economy and end the tragic human suffering the current economic meltdown has brought. President Mnangagwa will ditch some of Mugabe’s stupid policies like indigenization law and do something to reduce the runaway wholesale looting and plunder. If he can reduce the looting in Marange by half even, that will boost collected revenue by one billion dollars or more! The impact on the national economy will be unbelievable!

Mnangagwa cannot risk contesting in free and fair elections because he has too much political baggage, a lot more than Joice Mujuru and we know she has struggle to relaunch herself as a credible candidate to rule Zimbabwe.

VP Emmerson Mnangagwa can try to sell himself as his own man and distance himself from Mugabe and the past; he will fail. Mai Mujuru has tried to do that arguing that she said and did nothing to stop Zanu PF corruption, vote rigging and murderous tyranny because she saw nothing.

"A puppy does not open its eyes the day it is born," she argued.

Of course the people of Zimbabwe have dismissed that as an insult to their intelligence. There is no breed of dog, bird, lizard, or whatever whose young take more than 34 days to open their eyes let alone 34 months after birth. She expects us to believe that it took her 34 years to open her sexy eyes!

Oh by the way, Mai Mujuru may have been as blind as a blind-mole for 34 years but that did not stop her getting a lion's share of all the looting and plundering that has crippled the nation.

Mai Mujuru has maintained she does not know any details of how Zanu PF has been rigging elections; for once she is telling the truth. She is a simpleton who was promoted way, way above her level of competence. She has no idea how elections were being rigged because anything more complex than the equivalent of one variable linear equation is Greek to her. Even at the individual level, one is often to deal with complex, two variables, problems. As a national leader one has to deal with a lot more complex problems, with five or more variables.    

Mai Mujuru is a corrupt and incompetent simpleton who should have never been allowed to hold any public office beyond that of a councilor; her own track record of the last 34 years confirms this. She has only managed to stay in office all these years because Zanu PF rigged elections. Of course she is being naïve if we expect the people of Zimbabwe to elect her president in a free, fair and credible election.

Whereas Mujuru is struggling to shake off her corrupt simpleton tag Emmerson Mnangagwa will have an ever tougher time shaking off his vote rigging murderous thug image. Mnangagwa may not be smart enough to have masterminded any of the Zanu PF vote rigging schemes but he was the heartless thug who supervised their implementation.

The greatest hindrance to Mnangagwa’s presidential ambition is by far the prominent role he played in the Gukurahundi massacres. He has made a spirited effort to down play his role and even threatened to sue former MDC Senator David Coltart, to silence him. It all backfired as it only encouraged more and more details of his role to come out.

Mnangagwa will never implement any meaningful democratic reforms to allow free, fair and credible elections because he will never win such elections. Not even if the economy produced a double digit economic rate!

What Mnangagwa should do is force Mugabe to step down straight away, he does not have a single day to waste, so he can implement his economic reforms and policies designed to end the economic rot. He may be able to resist the pressure for meaningful political reform if he has great economic recovery figures under his belt.

Mnangagwa has spent his whole life building this Zanu PF dictatorship and perfected the art of vote rigging and Mugabe was the greatest beneficiary of his hard work. For the first time in 36 years he is to be the principle beneficiary; he is not going to risk it all by implementing reforms and forced to dismantle the dictatorship and renounce vote rigging! He has waited for too long to give it all up when he the presidency is now one rigged election away!