Mugabe using Grace to read mood of the nation analyst says

First Lady Grace Mugabe may be watching the beginning of the end of her newly launched political career, analysts warn.

There has been criticism that Zanu-PF is behaving like a leaderless herd, with the first lady's campaign speeches laced with so much hatred, bitterness and frustration.

Retired Lt. Colonel Kudzai Mbudzi, a former Zanla  combatant and former Zanu PF provincial spokesperson, says it was unprecedented that a  simple card-carrying member of an organisation without any substantive position, would move around the  main organisational constituency scolding and purportedly disciplining the general membership and its top leadership by mere cushion of one's conjugal relationship with the leader of the organisation.

Leadership is not sexually transmitted, he said.

"Effectively, she is giving the impression that she is a messenger speaking out the views and thoughts of president Mugabe, which thoughts now appear to be alignment with a particular faction.

"Amai Mugabe's recent insults and language generally is not very motherly. Society does not expect a mother who runs a orphanage to be threatening 'baby-dumping'. Such language is unmotherly.

"VP Mujuru has done well not to respond to these insults which are clearly factional and uncalled for. Amai should desist from deepening factions, she must be a mother to all, not to a faction."

Stephen Chan, professor of world politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, said it was evident the Zanu PF succession wars were hotting up.

"Most people would not have expected such a clearly direct attack on Mujuru," Chan told the Daily News yesterday.

"There are two questions here: Does Mujuru already have that much support that her rivals feel attacks of this sort are now needed?

"Or is the First Lady ignoring advice and shooting from the hip? It seems to me too loud and too early. If I were Mujuru, I would make no response at all. If her rivals are worried, that's good for her."

Pedzisai Ruhanya, a democracy scholar and political analyst, said: "What Grace and her cabal is doing has no precedence in Zanu PF. A sitting VP has never been humiliated and has never been removed in the manner they are trying to.

The kind of politics she is trying to introduce is foreign to Zanu PF. I don't foresee a situation the VP will be removed in the manner she is trying to."

Ruhanya said as Grace raves and rants, Mugabe is conspicuously silent.

"He wants to read the mood to see whether what Grace is saying has traction; the war veterans, State security organs, what's their reading? Once he gets all this info, he will make a decision," he said, adding there is likely to be no change.

At the same time, the Mujuru faction seems to be fighting back, and yesterday her loyalists stood up in Bindura and chanted rival slogans, while Ray Kaukonde openly defied the first lady by refusing to rise for a sham unity pact ostensibly to signal the end of factionalism.

This is both a result and a cause of Grace's loss of clout. And a result it is, because the Mujuru faction loyalists, who spearheaded this mutiny yesterday, would have avoided it had they thought Grace was strong.

Grace defiantly told the rally in Bindura on Thursday: "You say when Mugabe is gone you will take over his estate, come and take it today.

"What is stopping you from doing so since you use this road when you go to your home and the gates are open?"