'Tsvangirai's passport confiscated by Mnangagwa's govt, not by wife'

President Emmerson Mnangagwa's spokesman George Charamba has moved in to quash rumours that MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai's wife confiscated her husband's passport.

An earlier published report claimed that Macheka confiscated Tsvangirai's passport so to force him to resign and hand-over to his deputy Nelson Chamisa.

But Charamba has while distancing himself from the MDC party's factional innuendos, rubbished the report saying it was in fact government that withdrew Tsvangirai's green passport as it was issuing him with a diplomatic passport.

Charamba told the state media, "I am not a member of the MDC-T and I am just not knowledgeable about the goings on in that party.

"What I do know is that the Friday meeting (two weeks ago) between Mr Tsvangirai and President Mnangagwa and Vice President Chiwenga dealt with an issue that was exercising the former Prime Minister - the issue to do with the withdrawal of his diplomatic passport in circumstances that were unclear. It's not clear who instructed that but the effect of it is that Mr Tsvangirai no longer had his diplomatic passport, which meant he was now travelling on an ordinary green passport — and that meant he was no longer able to access those conveniences that come with the red passport accorded to diplomats and high level personalities by host countries," said Mr Charamba.

"A decision was taken there and then to instruct the new Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade General Sibusiso Moyo to reinstate that passport and, as per standard when you are being issued with a diplomatic passport, the Passport Office withdraws the green passport. No citizen is allowed to hold more than one passport," he said.

"Without pre-empting anything within the MDC-T political environment, I suspect that maybe very well where the confusion is coming from. What I want to underline is that it is a false discourse to try and suggest that the Zimbabwean military has a say or a role in determining leadership in opposition politics and I want to stress kuti kana vachiita factional politics dzavo vane G40 yavoka, kana vachiita factional politics dzavo, can they enact those within the framework of levers of instruments that they can control and I am very clear the military is not one such lever."

The MDC leader was diagonised with colon cancer last year and last week he issued a statement indicating that he was soon to hand over to a younger leader before the upcoming 2018 elections.