CIO infiltrates Mujuru's NPP

RECENT resignations in the National People's Party (NPP) are a result of infiltration by Zanu-PF apparatchiks, as well as by members of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), a senior party official claimed this week.

The newly-formed NPP, led by former Vice President Joice Mujuru, has got off to a rocky start, having been hit by resignations of senior members in Bulawayo and Matabeleland South.

Last month, the party's Matabeleland South provincial chairperson, Bekezela Maduma Fuzwayo, and Bulawayo provincial spokesperson Geneva Sibanda resigned from the NPP along with many other disgruntled party members.

Fuzwayo later re-joined the Welshman Ncube-led MDC.

This followed hard on the heels of a string of resignations in the Bulawayo province where disaffected members complained of tribalism, factionalism and disharmony in the party.

NPP vice president Samuel Sipepa-Nkomo who has been accused of leading one of the two factions in the party, said most of the resignations were a plot to dent their leader's profile. "NPP is infiltrated by Zanu-PF and CIOs; they are the ones behind all this (resignations)," Nkomo told the Daily News.

"They are all but stage-managing these so-called resignations and that's why I am saying it's infiltration. I recently read elsewhere in the papers that 50 people resigned from the party, honestly can someone stand there and point to me those people who are said to have resigned," he said.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily News during her visit to Bulawayo last month, Mujuru cited unnamed infiltrators as the ones behind instability in her party's Bulawayo structures.

"We are trying to get them to understand the party policy, the values, the regulations and procedures. But because there are infiltrations, if you are not very careful, this will distort the approach, which the party wants to promote," Mujuru said then.

Asked what the party was doing to deal with the infiltration, Sipepa-Nkomo said: "In any case, those who are resigning mean we are getting rid of infiltration."

Further quizzed about the faction he is allegedly leading, Nkomo said there was no way he could lead a faction when he was vice president of the party.

"I am not bothered at all by such a claim because we don't have that factionalism you are talking about.

"I have heard about it. Call them camps or factions. I cannot be part of a faction when I am a vice president, how can I do that."