Zanu-PF will not be blackmailed, says Kasukuwere

ZANU-PF will not hesitate to fire errant Members of Parliament because the party is on solid ground to win any by-election, national political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere has said.

He told The Herald at the weekend that the revolutionary party would not be blackmailed by people who think that if certain legislators were fired from the party, then the party would lose those   seats.

This comes amid "misguided and unsubstantiated" claims that people in Hurungwe West, whose representative in the National Assembly Temba Mliswa was fired from the party last week, were fully behind him.

He was sent packing on an array of charges ranging from insubordination, extortionist behaviour, denigrating party leadership and disruption of party meetings.

Also expelled was Headlands legislator Didymus Mutasa, who was also Zanu-PF former secretary for administration.

Their expulsion rendered their seats vacant and by-elections will be conducted in the two constituencies.

Kasukuwere said the party was not afraid of by-elections and as such  would not entertain unruly and defiant members.

"We don't want arrogance in the party. We won't be blackmailed by people who say if you remove so and so in our constituency we will dump the party or we won't vote for the party. We can't have the party image damaged like that. We will continue to defend our territory and we will win any election that comes our way," he said.

Kasukuwere said disciplinary proceedings would be instituted against anyone, regardless of position, who violated the party constitution.

"We've disciplinary channels that are followed to clean the party of any rot," he said.

"If we keep undisciplined and unrepentant cadres in the party then we're doomed for disaster. We want a leadership that instills discipline and that's to say we aren't going to hesitate to remove anyone who thinks that it's his or her right to misbehave."

Mliswa was the first provincial chairman to receive a no-confidence vote in the run up to the 6th National People's Congress for aligning himself with former Vice President Joice Mujuru's cabal that was plotting to unseat President Mugabe.

He remained unremorseful and disrupted two Zanu-PF meetings in Chinhoyi and Karoi in the past three weeks.

Mutasa was part of the same putschist cabal and has threatened to take Zanu-PF to court, challenging the outcome of last year's December Congress which left him in the  cold.

He dismally lost Central Committee elections in his Makoni Central district and subsequently failed to make it into the Politburo.

In dismissing him, the Politburo described him as unrepentant as he continued issuing statements that denigrated the party and its leadership.