News / National
Zanu-PF court fight imminent
01 Feb 2015 at 13:07hrs | Views
A Sunday paper reports that it has got it on good authority that the Zanu-PF stalwarts who are aggrieved by the recent turn of events in the ruling party have now almost completed putting their papers together and that it is now a matter of time before they launch their court action.
"My understanding is that all the papers for the court action are virtually ready and that it is now a question of timing when these will be lodged. It is imminent and this can happen anytime now," a Zanu-PF official who requested anonymity for fear of victimisation said yesterday.
Efforts to contact former Presidential Affairs minister Didymus Mutasa, who has been playing a leading role in the quest by party stalwarts to force the ruling party to reverse all decisions that were taken at its disputed damp squib "elective" congress that was held in Harare last December, failed yesterday.
According to The Daily News on Sunday, former party spokesperson Rugare Gumbo would only say that the court challenge would proceed soon.
"It's going to proceed," he said.
Asked whether Mutasa has had an opportunity to engage with President Robert Mugabe since the president came back from his long holiday, Gumbo said, "He has not yet talked to President Mugabe since he came back," adding that the reasons why the two had not been in touch could only be clarified by Mutasa himself.
Gumbo also said Mutasa had not yet been served with papers for Zanu-PF's planned disciplinary hearing against him.
But doubts remain whether Mutasa will attend the hearing given that he has said that he does not recognise the Zanu-PF leadership and party consitutional amendments that emerged from the disputed congress.
However, Pupurayi Togarepi, the Zanu-PF youth league chairperson, has insisted that Mutasa's proposed hearing would proceed whether he turned up or not.
Togarepi, who is one of the six-member disciplinary committee set up by Mugabe to deal with Mutasa's alleged misdemeanours, said the committee's verdict would not be dependent on whether Mutasa attended or didn't attend the hearing.
The other members of the committee, chaired by Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko, are Patrick Chinamasa, secretary for legal affairs; Savior Kasukuwere, political commissar; Kembo Mohadi, secretary for security; and Mugabe's wife Grace, chairperson of the Women's League.
The mooted hearing comes amid calls by some party hawks such as Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri and Kasukuwere to have Mutasa expelled from the party altogether.
"The process will not stop whether Mutasa comes or not as it is his constitutional right not to attend. It is his own business if he does not come as he is claiming and it will not change anything as we will go ahead and sit as a committee.
"Zanu-PF is bigger than an individual and Mutasa has been part of the process for his entire life.
"He knows how it works," Togarepi said.
He said he would not predict the outcome of the hearing before the sitting.
"I can refer you to the chairperson, vice president Mphoko on that matter but we are waiting for him to set the date and time for the hearing. We are all looking forward to it," Togarepi said.
Mutasa has dismissed the hearing which wants to question him for his remarks describing Zanu-PF's damp squib "elective" congress as "null and void".
He and his group are also threatening to take legal action against Zanu-PF's leadership, seeking to nullify the appointments made by Mugabe at the disputed congress.
He has also written to Sadc leaders asking them to mediate in the political discord within Zanu-PF.
Mutasa is adamant that the party's December congress was illegal, and has gone on to implore Mugabe to "listen to the voice of the majority" in the ruling party and ignore the advice of Mafikizolos (Johnny-come-latelies) who his group says have hijacked the party and are leading the nonagenarian down the garden path.
Mutasa further courted the wrath of his erstwhile Zanu-PF comrades when he recently signed a damning statement which was provocatively written in his former capacity as the ruling party's secretary for administration.
The no-holds-barred statement called for the nullification of all "purported constitutional amendments drafted and rail-roaded immediately before this so-called congress", as well as the restoration of the "elective dignity of congress and the one-man one-vote principle as enunciated by our armed struggle and constitution".
Meanwhile, a prominent Harare lawyer said yesterday that the planned hearing against Mutasa had "fatal defects" even before it got off — particularly because almost all of the committee members who were going to look into the case had allegedly "compromised" themselves already.
"If the committee attempts to sit to look into the case, it can easily be challenged because apart from all the issues that Mutasa is raising, the bias that its members have already publicly displayed is glaring," he said.
In the meantime, the Daily News on Sunday's sister paper, the Daily News, reported on Saturday that Zanu-PF's propaganda war had gone a notch up with another faceless Facebook character, in the mould of the controversial Baba Jukwa, surfacing in recent months and dishing out damaging tidbits about the ugly goings-on in the ruling party.
The intrepid political gossip phenomenon, going by the name
Zimbabweans for Prosperity (ZFP), already has more than 10 000 likes in the months it has been running.
However, it is believed that hundreds of thousands more people are accessing the page anonymously daily for fear of ending up being accused by thin-skinned officials of being associated with the Internet troll, as happened to some during the Baba Jukwa era.
Like Baba Jukwa before it, it comes across as intimately connected to and in the full know of many of the ugly goings-on within Zanu-PF — dishing out a steady stream of sensational claims about the party and its bigwigs, from the days of the liberation struggle to the present.
The page, which uses both Zanu-PF and Baba Jukwa lexicon such as Aluta Continua and Asijiki, was created after the disputed July 31, 2013 elections, but only started blowing full steam following the recent worsening of ructions in the ruling party.
ZFP has a cover photo with questions like "why did you go to war you Zanu-PF idiots?" and "Where are 2,2 million jobs Zanu-PF maggots?"
"My understanding is that all the papers for the court action are virtually ready and that it is now a question of timing when these will be lodged. It is imminent and this can happen anytime now," a Zanu-PF official who requested anonymity for fear of victimisation said yesterday.
Efforts to contact former Presidential Affairs minister Didymus Mutasa, who has been playing a leading role in the quest by party stalwarts to force the ruling party to reverse all decisions that were taken at its disputed damp squib "elective" congress that was held in Harare last December, failed yesterday.
According to The Daily News on Sunday, former party spokesperson Rugare Gumbo would only say that the court challenge would proceed soon.
"It's going to proceed," he said.
Asked whether Mutasa has had an opportunity to engage with President Robert Mugabe since the president came back from his long holiday, Gumbo said, "He has not yet talked to President Mugabe since he came back," adding that the reasons why the two had not been in touch could only be clarified by Mutasa himself.
Gumbo also said Mutasa had not yet been served with papers for Zanu-PF's planned disciplinary hearing against him.
But doubts remain whether Mutasa will attend the hearing given that he has said that he does not recognise the Zanu-PF leadership and party consitutional amendments that emerged from the disputed congress.
However, Pupurayi Togarepi, the Zanu-PF youth league chairperson, has insisted that Mutasa's proposed hearing would proceed whether he turned up or not.
Togarepi, who is one of the six-member disciplinary committee set up by Mugabe to deal with Mutasa's alleged misdemeanours, said the committee's verdict would not be dependent on whether Mutasa attended or didn't attend the hearing.
The other members of the committee, chaired by Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko, are Patrick Chinamasa, secretary for legal affairs; Savior Kasukuwere, political commissar; Kembo Mohadi, secretary for security; and Mugabe's wife Grace, chairperson of the Women's League.
The mooted hearing comes amid calls by some party hawks such as Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri and Kasukuwere to have Mutasa expelled from the party altogether.
"The process will not stop whether Mutasa comes or not as it is his constitutional right not to attend. It is his own business if he does not come as he is claiming and it will not change anything as we will go ahead and sit as a committee.
"Zanu-PF is bigger than an individual and Mutasa has been part of the process for his entire life.
"He knows how it works," Togarepi said.
He said he would not predict the outcome of the hearing before the sitting.
Mutasa has dismissed the hearing which wants to question him for his remarks describing Zanu-PF's damp squib "elective" congress as "null and void".
He and his group are also threatening to take legal action against Zanu-PF's leadership, seeking to nullify the appointments made by Mugabe at the disputed congress.
He has also written to Sadc leaders asking them to mediate in the political discord within Zanu-PF.
Mutasa is adamant that the party's December congress was illegal, and has gone on to implore Mugabe to "listen to the voice of the majority" in the ruling party and ignore the advice of Mafikizolos (Johnny-come-latelies) who his group says have hijacked the party and are leading the nonagenarian down the garden path.
Mutasa further courted the wrath of his erstwhile Zanu-PF comrades when he recently signed a damning statement which was provocatively written in his former capacity as the ruling party's secretary for administration.
The no-holds-barred statement called for the nullification of all "purported constitutional amendments drafted and rail-roaded immediately before this so-called congress", as well as the restoration of the "elective dignity of congress and the one-man one-vote principle as enunciated by our armed struggle and constitution".
Meanwhile, a prominent Harare lawyer said yesterday that the planned hearing against Mutasa had "fatal defects" even before it got off — particularly because almost all of the committee members who were going to look into the case had allegedly "compromised" themselves already.
"If the committee attempts to sit to look into the case, it can easily be challenged because apart from all the issues that Mutasa is raising, the bias that its members have already publicly displayed is glaring," he said.
In the meantime, the Daily News on Sunday's sister paper, the Daily News, reported on Saturday that Zanu-PF's propaganda war had gone a notch up with another faceless Facebook character, in the mould of the controversial Baba Jukwa, surfacing in recent months and dishing out damaging tidbits about the ugly goings-on in the ruling party.
The intrepid political gossip phenomenon, going by the name
Zimbabweans for Prosperity (ZFP), already has more than 10 000 likes in the months it has been running.
However, it is believed that hundreds of thousands more people are accessing the page anonymously daily for fear of ending up being accused by thin-skinned officials of being associated with the Internet troll, as happened to some during the Baba Jukwa era.
Like Baba Jukwa before it, it comes across as intimately connected to and in the full know of many of the ugly goings-on within Zanu-PF — dishing out a steady stream of sensational claims about the party and its bigwigs, from the days of the liberation struggle to the present.
The page, which uses both Zanu-PF and Baba Jukwa lexicon such as Aluta Continua and Asijiki, was created after the disputed July 31, 2013 elections, but only started blowing full steam following the recent worsening of ructions in the ruling party.
ZFP has a cover photo with questions like "why did you go to war you Zanu-PF idiots?" and "Where are 2,2 million jobs Zanu-PF maggots?"
Source - dailynews
