Bhora musango dent Mnangagwa's votes as Chamisa starts off well

With a bhora musango (internal sabotage) trend within Zanu-PF emerging, main opposition CCC leader Nelson Chamisa has started off well in the presidential election.

Although it is still early days in the poll as results trickle in, signs that President Emmerson Mnangagwa is getting lower votes than his party candidates in their constituencies are gathering momentum.

In Cowdray Park in Bulawayo, for instance, Finance minister Mthuli Ncube, who lost to CCC candidate Pashor Raphael Sibanda, got  6530 votes and Mnangagwa 3317 votes.

In Zvishavane-Ngezi, Zanu-PF candidate Mecky Jaravaza got 12 416 and the CCC's Leopold Mudisi 11 348 votes.

Chamisa was higher than them all with 13 231 votes, while Mnangagwa was lower than all of them with 10 194.

This is what happened in 2018.

With political fallout with Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga now common cause, Zanu-PF is deeply divided over Mnangagwa's leadership.

In a bid to address fears that the military command element loyal to Chiwenga might sabotage him as they did to the late former president Robert Mugabe in 2008 (allowing the late ex-prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai to win the first round of polling before pulling out of a subsequent bloody run-off in June that year), Mnangagwa has deployed a CIO-run outfit Forever Associates Zimbabwe to manage his re-election process.

But if the national lower votes trend grows, Mnangagwa - who is generally unpopular - would inevitably have yet another mountain to climb.

While Zanu-PF got a two-thirds majority, Mnangagwa scraped through with a wafer-thin margin, barely avoiding a run-off with 50.8%.