VP Mphoko receive barrage of attacks over Dabengwa remarks

Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko has received a barrage of attacks from the People in Matabeleland after he attacked Zapu leader Dumiso Dabengwa saying the former intelligence supremo has soiled his image and that of him after he left Zanu PF and said negative things about him.

Journalist and political commentator Methuseli Moyo said Mphoko's persistent, rabid and unprovoked attack on liberation war icon, fellow pioneer ex-combatant and Zapu military intelligence supremo, Dr Dumiso Dabengwa, aka Black Russian, is nauseating but revealing.

"It appears VP Mphoko and other ex-Zapu leaders in Zanu-PF feel incomplete and insecure without Dr Dabengwa, who in 2008 left the ruling party to revive Zapu," said Moyo.

"VP Mphoko says Dabengwa has "soiled" his liberation war icon status by leaving Zanu-PF. To the contrary, it is him who soiled his own liberation status by choosing to be collaborative with Zanu while his Zapu comrades were being butchered by the same party during Gukurahundi, and even well before that."

Moyo said whether Mphoko agrees or not, whether true or not, it is a fact that most Zimbabweans believe VP Mphoko 'sold out' to Zanu during and after the struggle.

"It is therefore VP Mphoko's own liberation war status, and indeed personal identity that has been "soiled", and not Dr Dabengwa's," said Moyo.

"Dr Dabengwa spent the whole 17 yrs he was in the struggle directly involved, at times from the front-line, while VP Mphoko spent the last years of the struggle either unaccounted for or doing what he thought was best for himself - which was remaining in Mozambique when the Zipra contingent sent there under the Zipa arrangement between Zanu and Zapu had been recalled."

Moyo said Zimbabweans are anxious to know that aspect of his history in its fullest and earnestness, and where he was during Gukurahundi, doing what, under whose leadership and why?

"Dr Dabengwa's political history is an open book and intact," said Moyo.

"Dr Dabengwa, VP Mphoko, and indeed all liberation war fighters, fought for democracy, which allows people to make their own political choices, which is what Dr Dr Dabengwa, and indeed VP Mphoko himself, have done by choosing to belong to their political formations in the past and now."

He questioned how then does that soil anyone's reputation?

"If it indeed soils as VP Mphoko suggests, his is the more sordid compared to Dr Dabengwa's, and will stink all the way to the grave," said Moyo.

"The VP must stop behaving like a political activist. A leader who does not respect deserves no respect."

Faith Silandulo Dube said when these people are eating with Zanu PF they become rabid and when they are chucked out they speak like former Zanu PF secretary for administration Didymas Mutasa.