Chiwenga affirms Mnangagwa as 2023 nears

Vice President Constantino Chiwenga appears to have put to rest, once and for all, claims that he is jostling for power with President Emmerson Mnangagwa after he recently publicly endorsed his boss as Zanu-PF's sole presidential candidate in the 2023 elections.

In addition, the powerful VP who doubles u as Health minister, and who masterminded the late former president Robert Mugabe's stunning ouster from power in 2017 also warned some Zanu-PF bigwigs against name-dropping and fuelling factionalism in the ruling party.

Meanwhile, speaking at a press conference, Zanu-PF national political commissar Victor Matemadanda reiterated that there was no friction between Mnangagwa and one of his deputies Constantino Chiwenga.

"People trying to create opinions these days are saying there is a faction, one that is pro the president and the other one pro vice president (Chiwenga).

"I don't know where they are getting this. It is in fact the vice president at the Matabeleland South conference who said the president was going to be helped by the party to fulfil his constitutional terms and how does he then come back and say he has a faction … when he is the number one supporter of the president?" Matemadanda asked.

"There is no faction … no misunderstanding and no any sort of commotion in Zanu-PF. We have never sat to discuss any such problems and to the best of our knowledge there is nothing like that," he added.

Zanu-PF's brutal factional, tribal and succession wars that had long ravaged the ruling party were temporarily ended in dramatic fashion by the military which rolled its tanks into Harare on November 15, 2017 - after deciding
that they had had enough of Mugabe and his erratic wife Grace.

However, the demons of factionalism in the party have returned with renewed vigour as highlighted by the
brouhaha surrounding the party's reintroduced district coordinating committees (DCCs) - whose elections are yet
to be held.


More to follow.....
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