News / National
Mugabe cracks head as Zanu-PF implodes ahead of polls
18 Apr 2013 at 11:23hrs | Views
AS President Robert Mugabe prepares for possibly his last electoral battle before retiring from active politics, internecine infighting which has erupted once again in his faction-riddled party poses nightmares for the veteran nationalist who would want to exit the grand political stage with his head held high.
President Mugabe used the extraordinary Politburo meeting to try and quell infighting in Zanu-PF, which celebrates its Golden Jubilee in August. He is also expected to rally his cadres for an epic battle against an unpredictable Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai - his fiercest rival since independence.
The Zanu-PF leader is battling to contain major fallouts in his party which might cost him crucial votes at the polls whose exact dates could be negotiated between the principals in the inclusive government.
The party, which lost its majority in Parliament in 2008 to the combined MDC formations for the first time since 1980, has been rocked by factionalism in all the party's 10 political provinces.
After opening the succession debate in 2009, President Mugabe had to terminate it after the subject caused serious ructions in the party. He also disbanded a succession committee that had been set up to identify his possible successor.
Since then, President Mugabe has laboured to send a clear message to party faithful that he was going nowhere in order to contain those aspiring to take-over from him in the event that he retires. But that has done very little to stop bigwigs within the party from positioning themselves around the crown in all manner possible.
So fierce has been the infighting in Zanu-PF that warring factions are uncharacteristically roping in the police to investigate their rivals.
In order to keep the party glued together ahead of tricky elections this year, President Mugabe has put together a three-member team to mend the cracks. Led by the party's national chairperson Simon Khaya-Moyo, other members of the committee are Didymus Mutasa, the party's secretary for administration and national political commissar Webster Shamu.
The committee is racing against time to cover all the 10 provinces in a bid to rally members to find common ground before the crunch polls. The fire-fighting team is set to visit Manicaland tomorrow where deep-seated divisions pitting the province's political heavyweights were brought to the fore last week.
In Manicaland, strange bedfellows are teaming up against Mutasa, seen as the Godfather of the province, whom they accuse of causing divisions in the region. The latest squabbles in the province have Mutasa and his loyalists who include former chairperson Basil Nyabadza on one side against Zanu-PF Women's League chairperson Oppah Muchinguri, Energy and Power Development Deputy Minister Hubert Nyanhongo, war veterans leader Joseph Chinotimba, Buhera North Member of Parliament William Mutomba, suspended provincial chairperson Mike Madiro and the acting chairperson Dorothy Mabika on the other side.
This week, Madiro and Mabika appeared before a Mutare provincial magistrate on stock theft charges after they allegedly stole 10 beasts they received from a Chipinge farmer as donations towards President Mugabe's 88th birthday celebrations that were held in Mutare last year.
Madiro and others also face separate charges of fraud and corruption involving more than US$700 000 they allegedly received from diamond mining companies in Chiadzwa on the pretext that it was meant for party activities.
The accused deny any wrong doing and blame political mudslinging for their fate although rivals accuse them of attempting to bring in political dimensions to the case in an attempt to cloud issues.
Rugare Gumbo, the party's secretary for information and publicity, this week confirmed that Khaya-Moyo, Mutasa and Shamu have already visited Bulawayo and would be heading to Manicaland tomorrow to cool rising political temperatures there before heading to other provinces on a similar mission.
"They have already been to Bulawayo and on Friday they will be in Manicaland. They were mandated by the Politburo," said Gumbo.
Ahead of tomorrow's visit, Mutasa's rivals said they were not happy that the former speaker of Parliament was part of the three-member team, alleging that he was part and parcel of the problems rocking the province.
They feared that they may not get a fair hearing as the party's secretary for administration was an interested party "who should do the honourable thing by recusing himself from the issues at hand".
Those going for Mutasa have warned of a repeat of "bhora mudondo", a code used in 2008 to influence party supporters to vote for Zanu-PF Parliamentary representatives in the March elections and not for President Mugabe.
Problems in Manicaland could be said to be child's play compared to what is happening in the rest of the provinces. While the disbandment of District Coordinating Committees last year was meant to contain infighting within Zanu-PF, divisive conflict that has continued to weaken the party is refusing to go away.
In Bulawayo, there is discontent after the sacking of then provincial chairperson Isaac Dakamela, who has since been replaced by Killian Sibanda. Several Zanu-PF youths were last month arrested for violent conduct against Sibanda and other provincial executives during an aborted meeting that Khaya-Moyo was supposed to chair.
Moyo was forced to call-off the meeting due to the violence. The violence case is pending in the Bulawayo courts.
Sources told The Financial Gazette that despite the visit by the probe team, some members in Bulawayo were still disgruntled as they feel that the team did not listen to all the voices.
Contacted for comment over the Khaya-Moyo-led mission's sojourn to the province, Dakamela said: "I was not invited to that meeting. I have no comment. All comments are reserved."
In Matabeleland North, factions are pulling in different directions after the then provincial chairperson Zwelitsha Masuku was suspended in 2011 and replaced by Richard Moyo.
Like Madiro, Masuku has found himself being hauled before the courts facing theft charges and, in his case, they were related to stealing a tractor.
While Matabeleland South has its fair share of problems, provincial chairperson Andrew Langa, is upbeat that Zanu-PF would emerge victorious this year after losing all the 13 House of Assembly seats to the MDC formations in 2008.
"We have tried to clear the ground for us as a party by putting up strong cells and come elections whether June or whenever, we are definitely going to emerge victorious," he said.
Langa said the province had since intensified its policies of indigenisation and land reform which he said were popular among the electorate, while adding that their accessibility as a party had significantly improved over the past four years.
"We don't have any challenges as a party in Matabeleland South; we are only seeing opportunities of winning," he said.
President Mugabe's home province of Mashonaland West is also embroiled in problems of its own, with provincial chairperson John Mafa having previously been suspended, before bouncing back in party polls last year.
Mafa is also under pressure to quit the position, with party rivals alleging that he is fanning divisions and that Zanu-PF would fare badly in the forthcoming polls in the province if he remained in charge.
Temba Mliswa, a businessman eyeing a seat in Hurungwe on a Zanu-PF ticket, is currently out on bail on charges of assaulting Hurungwe East legislator, Sarah Mahoka.
Despite being a member of the team that is supposed to bring back sanity in that province, Shamu has also been fingered as a player in the infighting in Mashonaland West.
President Mugabe has previously blamed infighting caused by the imposition of candidates among others as the reason for the party's poor showing in the 2008 harmonised polls.
In that poll, Zanu-PF lost its dominion over parliament and local authorities to MDC formations, with the party's leader only managing to snatch "victory" from the jaws of defeat after his main rival, the MDC-T leader pulled out of that year's presidential election run-off citing violence.
Three months earlier, Tsvangirai had outpolled the Zanu-PF leader, but, according to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, failed to garner more than 50 percent plus one of the total votes cast required under the Constitution to claim the presidency in the first round of voting.
It remains to be seen whether Khaya-Moyo and his colleagues would succeed in their mission of healing the widening rifts.
President Mugabe used the extraordinary Politburo meeting to try and quell infighting in Zanu-PF, which celebrates its Golden Jubilee in August. He is also expected to rally his cadres for an epic battle against an unpredictable Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai - his fiercest rival since independence.
The Zanu-PF leader is battling to contain major fallouts in his party which might cost him crucial votes at the polls whose exact dates could be negotiated between the principals in the inclusive government.
The party, which lost its majority in Parliament in 2008 to the combined MDC formations for the first time since 1980, has been rocked by factionalism in all the party's 10 political provinces.
After opening the succession debate in 2009, President Mugabe had to terminate it after the subject caused serious ructions in the party. He also disbanded a succession committee that had been set up to identify his possible successor.
Since then, President Mugabe has laboured to send a clear message to party faithful that he was going nowhere in order to contain those aspiring to take-over from him in the event that he retires. But that has done very little to stop bigwigs within the party from positioning themselves around the crown in all manner possible.
So fierce has been the infighting in Zanu-PF that warring factions are uncharacteristically roping in the police to investigate their rivals.
In order to keep the party glued together ahead of tricky elections this year, President Mugabe has put together a three-member team to mend the cracks. Led by the party's national chairperson Simon Khaya-Moyo, other members of the committee are Didymus Mutasa, the party's secretary for administration and national political commissar Webster Shamu.
The committee is racing against time to cover all the 10 provinces in a bid to rally members to find common ground before the crunch polls. The fire-fighting team is set to visit Manicaland tomorrow where deep-seated divisions pitting the province's political heavyweights were brought to the fore last week.
In Manicaland, strange bedfellows are teaming up against Mutasa, seen as the Godfather of the province, whom they accuse of causing divisions in the region. The latest squabbles in the province have Mutasa and his loyalists who include former chairperson Basil Nyabadza on one side against Zanu-PF Women's League chairperson Oppah Muchinguri, Energy and Power Development Deputy Minister Hubert Nyanhongo, war veterans leader Joseph Chinotimba, Buhera North Member of Parliament William Mutomba, suspended provincial chairperson Mike Madiro and the acting chairperson Dorothy Mabika on the other side.
This week, Madiro and Mabika appeared before a Mutare provincial magistrate on stock theft charges after they allegedly stole 10 beasts they received from a Chipinge farmer as donations towards President Mugabe's 88th birthday celebrations that were held in Mutare last year.
Madiro and others also face separate charges of fraud and corruption involving more than US$700 000 they allegedly received from diamond mining companies in Chiadzwa on the pretext that it was meant for party activities.
The accused deny any wrong doing and blame political mudslinging for their fate although rivals accuse them of attempting to bring in political dimensions to the case in an attempt to cloud issues.
Rugare Gumbo, the party's secretary for information and publicity, this week confirmed that Khaya-Moyo, Mutasa and Shamu have already visited Bulawayo and would be heading to Manicaland tomorrow to cool rising political temperatures there before heading to other provinces on a similar mission.
"They have already been to Bulawayo and on Friday they will be in Manicaland. They were mandated by the Politburo," said Gumbo.
Ahead of tomorrow's visit, Mutasa's rivals said they were not happy that the former speaker of Parliament was part of the three-member team, alleging that he was part and parcel of the problems rocking the province.
They feared that they may not get a fair hearing as the party's secretary for administration was an interested party "who should do the honourable thing by recusing himself from the issues at hand".
Those going for Mutasa have warned of a repeat of "bhora mudondo", a code used in 2008 to influence party supporters to vote for Zanu-PF Parliamentary representatives in the March elections and not for President Mugabe.
In Bulawayo, there is discontent after the sacking of then provincial chairperson Isaac Dakamela, who has since been replaced by Killian Sibanda. Several Zanu-PF youths were last month arrested for violent conduct against Sibanda and other provincial executives during an aborted meeting that Khaya-Moyo was supposed to chair.
Moyo was forced to call-off the meeting due to the violence. The violence case is pending in the Bulawayo courts.
Sources told The Financial Gazette that despite the visit by the probe team, some members in Bulawayo were still disgruntled as they feel that the team did not listen to all the voices.
Contacted for comment over the Khaya-Moyo-led mission's sojourn to the province, Dakamela said: "I was not invited to that meeting. I have no comment. All comments are reserved."
In Matabeleland North, factions are pulling in different directions after the then provincial chairperson Zwelitsha Masuku was suspended in 2011 and replaced by Richard Moyo.
Like Madiro, Masuku has found himself being hauled before the courts facing theft charges and, in his case, they were related to stealing a tractor.
While Matabeleland South has its fair share of problems, provincial chairperson Andrew Langa, is upbeat that Zanu-PF would emerge victorious this year after losing all the 13 House of Assembly seats to the MDC formations in 2008.
"We have tried to clear the ground for us as a party by putting up strong cells and come elections whether June or whenever, we are definitely going to emerge victorious," he said.
Langa said the province had since intensified its policies of indigenisation and land reform which he said were popular among the electorate, while adding that their accessibility as a party had significantly improved over the past four years.
"We don't have any challenges as a party in Matabeleland South; we are only seeing opportunities of winning," he said.
President Mugabe's home province of Mashonaland West is also embroiled in problems of its own, with provincial chairperson John Mafa having previously been suspended, before bouncing back in party polls last year.
Mafa is also under pressure to quit the position, with party rivals alleging that he is fanning divisions and that Zanu-PF would fare badly in the forthcoming polls in the province if he remained in charge.
Temba Mliswa, a businessman eyeing a seat in Hurungwe on a Zanu-PF ticket, is currently out on bail on charges of assaulting Hurungwe East legislator, Sarah Mahoka.
Despite being a member of the team that is supposed to bring back sanity in that province, Shamu has also been fingered as a player in the infighting in Mashonaland West.
President Mugabe has previously blamed infighting caused by the imposition of candidates among others as the reason for the party's poor showing in the 2008 harmonised polls.
In that poll, Zanu-PF lost its dominion over parliament and local authorities to MDC formations, with the party's leader only managing to snatch "victory" from the jaws of defeat after his main rival, the MDC-T leader pulled out of that year's presidential election run-off citing violence.
Three months earlier, Tsvangirai had outpolled the Zanu-PF leader, but, according to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, failed to garner more than 50 percent plus one of the total votes cast required under the Constitution to claim the presidency in the first round of voting.
It remains to be seen whether Khaya-Moyo and his colleagues would succeed in their mission of healing the widening rifts.
Source - fingaz
