War vets escalate feud with Mugabe

War veterans have accused President Robert Mugabe of arm-twisting Zanu-PF's provinces into endorsing him as their preferred choice for the 2018 presidential election, as the fallout between the disaffected former freedom fighters and the increasingly frail nonagenarian deepens.

This comes as all of the party's 10 provinces have now endorsed Mugabe, 92, as their 2018 presidential candidate, despite growing concerns within the former liberation movement about his health and continued fitness to rule at his advanced age — which is worsening Zanu-PF's deadly succession wars.

In addition, some Zanu-PF affiliates — including a minority section of ex-combatants, war collaborators and former political detainees — have also endorsed Mugabe, as the ruling party's vicious tribal, factional and succession wars get more intractable.

This also all comes as disgruntled war veterans, led by sacked former Cabinet minister Christopher Mutsvangwa, have publicly backed Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa to succeed Mugabe — and going to the extent of warning that blood could be shed in the country if he is overlooked.

The spokesperson of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA), Douglas Mahiya, told the Daily News yesterday that it was "unfathomable" that his organisation's members would endorse Mugabe as their preferred presidential candidate for 2018 given his advanced age and health issues.

"The legitimate leader for war veterans is Chris Mutsvangwa. So, if whatever endorsement has been made didn't come from him, that endorsement is meaningless," Mahiya told the Daily News.

"As we have said before, we belong to all political parties. Hatisi kuzoisa vanhu vavamwe vanhu, tiri vanhu veruzhinji rweZimbabwe (we will never endorse other people's candidates as we and the people are one). You must know that everyone in Zimbabwe contributed something towards the liberation war.

"This is why we say we are going to stand on the side of the people and support everyone who respects the ideals of the liberation struggle. After we were expelled from Zanu-PF we became a national apparatus. We won't align ourselves to a certain group or certain individuals anymore," he added.

While Mugabe and Zanu-PF have lately been working hard to heal the widening rift between them and the disaffected former freedom fighters, he lashed at Mutsvangwa and his executive last weekend for allegedly misleading ex-combatants — reminding them further that "politics leads the gun".

In the same vein, Mugabe flatly refused to give in to the demands of the war veterans that he ditches alleged kingpins of a Zanu-PF faction going by the moniker Generation 40 (G40), including ministers Saviour Kasukuwere and Jonathan Moyo, who are said to be against the ascendancy of Mnangagwa to the presidency.

But Mahiya disagreed with Mugabe declaring that war veterans were now part of politics and therefore the nonagenarian was mistaken in his belief that they wanted the gun to direct politics.

"I want people to know that it is politics that discovered the formula to take the guns and we have now surrendered our guns and are left with politics.

While the guns have been put aside, the people who carried the guns were in politics first before they carried those guns," he said.

Other Zanu-PF insiders also told the Daily News yesterday that although there were some provinces which wanted Mugabe to step down in December and hand-over power to Mnangagwa, these provinces had still endorsed the nonagenarian out of fear of being victimised, as had happened to former Vice President Joice Mujuru and her allies in the run-up to the party's sham December 2014 congress.

"The president has lately been showing visible signs of old age as he has struggled to walk and keep up with his busy schedule. However, we cannot speak openly about this because we fear being purged.

"We know that the axe is always hovering above our heads, even as everyone agrees that Gushungo (Mugabe) is now too old and frankly a liability to both the party and country," one senior party official said.

Mugabe and his brawling ruling party have been working hard to try and heal the widening rift between them and the former freedom fighters, who stunningly ended their 41-year relationship with the nonagenarian after they released a damning communiqué on him and Zanu-PF in July this year.

Mugabe and Zanu-PF have been dangling gifts to the war vets, including cash, land and vehicles, in a bid to strengthen the ruling party ahead of the eagerly-anticipated 2018 polls — after initial thuggish methods failed to coerce the disgruntled ex-combatants into line.

In serving their divorce papers on Mugabe five months ago, the liberation struggle fighters also said pointedly that Mugabe's continued stay in power was now a stumbling block to the country's development, adding rather churlishly that the nonagenarian would be "a hard-sell" if he contested the watershed 2018 polls.

Mugabe responded by warning the war veterans that they would be dealt with severely, including through the use of extra-judicial suppression methods that his former liberation movement incorporated during the country's independence war — such as incarcerating dissenters in inhuman dungeons where they were forced to live like caged rats.

Over the years, war veterans have served as Mugabe and Zanu-PF's political power dynamos, playing particularly significant roles to keep the nonagenarian on the throne in the hotly- disputed 2000 and 2008 national elections which were both marred by serious violence and the murder of hundreds of opposition supporters.