Mugabe's failure to name the politburo and VPs is a calculated one before his daredevil checkmate move!

"Africa's oldest head of state and the only leader Zimbabwe has known since independence from Britain in 1980 was elected unopposed at the five-yearly Zanu PF meeting, putting him on track to contest the 2018 presidential elections, when he will be 94," reported New Zimbabwe.

The last three months have been an endless drama which started with a bang when Grace Mugabe took centre stage as the newly elected Zanu PF Women's League chairperson – against party rules which demanded that one must have held a provincial post for a minimum of 15 years at least to be eligible for the position. The minute she accepted the nomination she launched into a relentless and even hysterical attacked of VP Joice Mujuru accusing her of corruption, incompetence and, most serious of all, of plotting to force her husband, Mugabe, out of office.
Grace wanted VP Mujuru dumped, period.

Everyone expected VP Mujuru to be dumped at the end of the Zanu PF congress. Mugabe has changed the party's constitution so that he alone and not the congress gets to appoint all politburo members – the party's decision-making body -, the two second secretaries (who also become the two VPs) and party chairperson. Now everyone has to wait to know whom Mugabe has picked.
"I don't want to rush it, so be patient. By mid next week, by Wednesday or Thursday, we will make an announcement," Mugabe explained. The only position that was confirmed during the congress is that of his wife as Women's League chairperson.
Is this delay deliberate or a calculated move? He promotes his wife from nowhere to be head of women's league, gives her a few days to bed-in; then a few days later he promotes her to VP position (not exactly from nowhere but from position women's league, forget that she was there long enough only to take off her coat), gives her a few months of hands on experience and, without saying so, let her effectively take the top job - the presidency! Knowing Mugabe as I do, this is a very possible scenario.

Mugabe has managed to outwit his fellow Zanu PF leaders for 34 years to keep his top job regardless of his pathetic, absolutely pathetic, performance has leader of the party and government. Here is a corrupt tyrant who has completely destroyed the nation's economy forcing millions into abject poverty and despair and terrorised the nation murdering over 30 000 to stay in power.

He has made Zanu PF unelectable; the party is still in power only because of the breath-taking incompetence of the opposition MDC who failed to get even one democratic reform implemented and thus allowing Mugabe and Zanu PF to rig the elections.

So how is it possible then that such a corrupt and tyrannical thug like Mugabe with a miserable track record has managed to keep his job as the leader of Zanu PF for more than the normal two terms? But the reality is that he has done just that and for 34 years already and has just been elected for a further five years.

The way Mugabe has managed to once again outwit and outclass VP Mujuru and her supporters when she had the majority of the party supporters clamouring for change showed that Zanu PF is a party of deadwood. So why should he not hand over Zanu PF to his wife; she has no experience and her performance on the political stage so far shows that she has very little working grey stuff between her ears but, what the hell, so does everyone else in the party. Zanu PF is a party of deadwood; what difference would it make whether the wood comes from a pine tree or mango tree, deadwood is deadwood!

Mugabe has roughed up many, many senior members of his party in the last three months by riding roughshod over their rights to have at least some say on how the party is run. At least they thought they had some say until now only to learn that they did not. He is giving them a few days to digest that political reality of the last three month and to be sure they all accept it before hitting them with his final, shrewd and daredevil checkmate move – a new politburo of the worst deadwood but whose loyalty to him and his wish to remain life-president is total headed by none other than Grace, his wife, the making of his own Mugabe dynasty!