Mnangagwa headed for trouble?

Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa could run into some serious "political headwinds" with his countrywide tours to explain the new constitutional reforms, analysts say.

This comes as his predecessor Joice Mujuru was pretty much felled for "marketing herself through the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Social and Economic Transformation (ZimAsset)" - a fate, which could also befall the Zanu PF strongman under the party's treacherous succession politics.

Already, Mashonaland East provincial chiefs' head Enos Musarurwa's statements that the turnout by many at a Marondera meeting on Friday and including some legislators seen as Mujuru's allies was a huge "endorsement of the current leadership" has set tongues wagging.

"For a man who counts the current governor Joel Matiza among his allies, you cannot exactly understand what he (Musarurwa) was talking about when he was going on and on about endorsement of the current leadership at a government meeting," said an observer.

"In the meantime, you will also remember that Mujuru was floored for taking a whole Women's League structure and entourage for her ZimAsset meetings, yet Mnangagwa saunters in with government officials to largely talk about party issues," they said.

While the meeting was also attended by people like Ray Kaukonde, Olivia Muchena and Simbaneuta Mudarikwa - as part of a routine act by Zanu PF members of parliament - Musarurwa's statements could have equally been primed to project a view that those fighting for order in the party were isolated.

Crucially, the rebel chief could have been simply "parroting some factional leaders' desperate bid for legitimacy" among the party's supporters or rank and file.

The development also comes as ex-Presidential Affairs minister Didymus Mutasa and Rugare Gumbo have launched various steps to overturn several decisions taken at President Robert Mugabe, and his wife Grace's behest.

These include the leadership changes at the party's sixth national congress and where up to 16 ministers, including Mujuru, were unceremoniously ejected.

At Friday's meeting, Mnangagwa also seemed to contradict Matiza's view that a handful of white commercial farmers still remaining in the province were being protected by Kaukonde's former executive.

"When we are now distributing this land there is no law that forbids us to grant pieces of land in the same manner we do to blacks… to whites. To do that, we asked each provincial land committee to provide to the national land committee those you… have agreed that you would (want) to retain," Mnangagwa said, adding provincial leaders only gave recommendations, which would only be ratified at national levels.