Mugabe defends Chiwenga's PhD

President Robert Mugabe yesterday chose the packed National Sports Stadium as the best platform to heap praises on the military boss Constantino Chiwenga for attaining a doctorate degree - while in the process invalidating claims by Higher and Tertiary Education minister Jonathan Moyo - who had questioned how he acquired it.

Moyo last month questioned Chiwenga's PhD from University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, when he challenged the commander of the Defence Forces to come clean on the real authors of "his" dissertation.

This was after Chiwenga had issued a stinging and ominous statement which made veiled threats at Moyo in a development which political analysts said was being fuelled by Mugabe's unresolved succession issue.

Yesterday Mugabe, who gave a very short speech at the 37th commemorations of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) day, spoke glowingly about Chiwenga's academic achievement before a bumper crowd which responded with a thunderous applause.

Mugabe - a stellar academic in his own right - congratulated Chiwenga for producing a "very good doctorate degree".

"Our top commander is now known as Dr Chiwenga. He studied for a very good doctorate," Mugabe said.

"He did what every other doctorate student does, which is to carry out a comprehensive research which will then be used as a case study by other people studying the same field," he said.

Mugabe further said Chiwenga was leading by example as the most senior military man in the country.

"I had not congratulated him on the attainment of his doctorate degree, I am very happy with it. It is now two years since he earned the degree.

"He is leading by example and we expect junior army officers to emulate him. We have opened the National Defence University where our young officers can study and earn top degrees," said Mugabe.

Moyo had suggested that Chiwenga had his UKZN dissertation written for him.

Chiwenga's paper examined alleged double standards in United Nations Security Council humanitarian missions, according to information published by the university's in-house periodicals in 2015.

The university said Chiwenga's thesis found that there was "a precipitous decline of UN moral stature, particularly in the eyes of the developing world."

But following a public spat with Chiwenga, Moyo took to microblogging site Twitter to claim that the army supremo did not write the thesis on his own.

"Finally, I'm happy that Chiwenga wants pre and post-independence disclosures about who was who, who did what and so forth. That's good.

"Meanwhile, I take that to mean he wants the disclosure of who contributed what to his doctorate and who really wrote his KZN PhD," Moyo wrote.

Chiwenga claims to have interviewed Mugabe - a fierce critic of the UN Security Council - during his investigation.

Yesterday was the second time that Mugabe had appeared to correct Moyo's differing statements.

On June 30, during a youth interface rally in Masvingo, Mugabe praised the Command Agriculture programme just weeks after Moyo had rubbished it.

"The vice president (Emmerson) Mnangagwa initiated Command Agriculture with the first lady in an attempt to unite people, their concern was that why can't we unite people sezvo taita nzara.

"They sat down the two of them, we didn't even know it….that's when they came up with the idea…and we accepted that it was a good project and that it would need

"What wrong did Mnangagwa do? (In fact) this is what we call ideas," Mugabe said to ignite loud cheers from the big crowd.

"This is our programme that comes under the ministry of Agriculture Dr (Joseph) Made. A very beautiful programme. We must not kill it. We see the fruits of this programme, a bumper harvest," added Mugabe.

Moyo had repeatedly savaged Mnangagwa on Twitter, where he described Command Agriculture in disparaging terms.

In one of his tweets Moyo has described Command Agriculture as Command Ugly Culture while also claiming it was being led by "Command Thieves".