President Mugabe fall out with Mujuru due to Coup d'état

COLOGNE - President Robert Mugabe's bitter fall out with ousted vice president, Joice Mujuru, has nothing to do with an alleged plot to kill him nor graft charges laid against his former deputy, but a political putsch that almost got him booted out of power in 2007, suspected in government circles to have been masterminded by the late General Solomon Mujuru, The Telescope News reported.

General Mujuru, who is former VP Mujuru's husband and a decorated war veteran of the liberation struggle against British colonial rule, distanced himself from the plot, which his detractors speculated was calculated to discredit the new deputy president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who the coup plotters wanted to reportedly invite to form a government, with the heads of the armed forces.

Mugabe survived the potentially deadly coup d'état attempt involving almost 400 soldiers and high-ranking members of the military that would have occurred on June 2 or June 15, 2007, but managed to quash and forestall the plan by a whisker, courtesy of intervention by french police authorities and a leading foreign intelligence agency, said to be having close working relations with Zanu PF.

At the height of the foiled coup, this reporter made an interview for a private weekly in the capital, with one of the alleged coup plotters, Gilbert Kagodora, then treasurer for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in Mashonaland Central, who said he had been abducted by State intelligence operatives during a business meeting with retired army officer, Albert Matapo, in connection with the crime in Harare.

Matapo, then Spokesman for the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) Ben Ncube, Major General Engelbert Rugeje, and Air Vice Marshall Elson Moyo, together with all alleged leaders of the coup including Kagodora were arrested and charged with treason.

Kagodora maintained he was being falsely accused, and that he had suffered torture together with a group of former military servicemen at the hands of the Military Intelligence Unit (MIU).

Mujuru was elevated to the influential post of VP in 2004, after her husband, the late General Solomon Mujuru, muscled in to block a clear victory by Mnangagwa, resulting in Zanu PF preserving one of the presidium seats for a woman. Mujuru rose from being a water resources minister to becoming the first female vice president of the country, while Mnangagwa was demoted to rural housing minister.

"The downfall of Joice Mujuru, is rooted in Mugabe's fear of a coup, like the one which almost cost him his rule in 2007," said a retired army officer from his South Africa base on Wednesday, where he is operating a security firm.

"If it had not been for the french police, who acted as whistle-blowers after receiving information and plans of the coup, Mugabe was going to be history. They also got critical help from a reputed foreign intelligence organisation, which was consulted to join the dots and connect those involved. Even today this intelligence organisation, is still consulted for many covert operations, including the manipulation of votes in the 2013 presidential elections."

Mugabe recently made it a public secret that, he was quietly aware of the Mujurus scheme to grab power from his hands since 2004, and that former VP was conspiring with the MDC and its "sponsor-state, the United States", to hasten leadership change in Zimbabwe.

The nonagenarian has also said Mujuru is "too simplistic" to lead Zimbabwe and lacks a proper grasp of statecraft.

Mugabe last month said of Mujuru: "….thinking with your simple mind, you could not withstand the pressures of statecraft."

Officials close to the presidency said Mnangagwa's sudden change of fortunes, to become hot favourite to succeed Mugabe, is in part due to an intelligence report on Zanu PF recently prepared for Mugabe, which exonerates him from involvement in the 2007 coup, and not having any links with the British and American intelligence services.

The 2007 coup, itself a real first time threat to Mugabe's rule since Independence, claimed the lives of three military generals.

One prominent such is, Brigadier-General Paul Armstrong Gunda, believed to have been assassinated by security agents who falsely linked him to the alleged coup plot, according to Matapo who is now out of jail.
Gunda, who was Commander of One Brigade in Bulawayo, and was declared a national hero, died in mysterious circumstances on June 20, 2007 after his car reportedly collided with a goods train at Watershed School outside Marondera.

Apart from Gunda, two more generals linked to that plot, Brigadier-General Fakazi Muleya and Retired Major-General Gideon Lifa, also died under mysterious circumstances.