Jonathan Moyo blasts US, EU Embassies

ZANU-PF Politburo member Professor Jonathan Moyo yesterday castigated the United States and European Union Embassies in Zimbabwe for meddling in the country's internal affairs and behaving like opposition parties in violation of their terms of reference.

Addressing the Bulawayo Press Club, Prof Moyo said the embassies were working with opposition parties who have recently been engaging in violent demonstrations that caused destruction of property in the country.

He said the main agenda of the violent demonstrations carried out under various hash tags ranging from #Tajamuka and #MyZimbabwe fronted by the MDC-T and #ThisFlag fronted by Pastor Evan Mawarire, were an attempt to frustrate the Government from implementing its policies.

He said after Pastor Mawarire was given false credit for organising the July 6 stayaway carefully arranged to coincide with a civil service strike which had no relation to his campaign, the opposition felt the attention of their Western handlers had shifted to the pastor.

"The American ambassador and the EU ambassador were very supportive of this (#ThisFlag). When the EU and American ambassadors support something, the opposition think it's what God has made, they follow like the gospel.

"Zimbabwean politics is determined by what the ambassadors do and say that is why some of them take themselves to the action like the French ambassador. I have been fighting the EU and American ambassadors. I'm shocked by the things they tweet, they tweet like they are opposition politicians in our country, they don't tweet like ambassadors," said Prof Moyo.

"An issue has arisen which has not been properly examined as to what are the implications on the Vienna Convention arising from social media because the ambassadors, in particular the American and EU ambassadors, are using social media in ways that are blatantly in violation of the Vienna Convention which they would not do outside social media.

But social media is a universe, it's like the virtual world and real world. What they can't do in the real world they are doing in the virtual world and it's raising serious new questions." Prof Moyo said the opposition, rattled by #Thisflag, went on the ground and started embarking on violent demonstrations.

"Basically they want to trigger a situation where the state takes certain measures and they say look they are now interfering with our rights," he said. Dismissing calls for electoral reforms by opposition parties under the banner of NERA, Prof Moyo said some of them were part of the constitution making process during the days of the Global Political Agreement where the Electoral Act was amended but were now showing their true colours as electoral cowards.

The Tsholotsho North legislator also cited what he called the "Mujuru factor" as responsible for shrinking the Government's policy implementation space soon after the July 2013 elections.

"What we can now confidently describe as the Mujuru factor emerged and caused pre-occupation. This was the first major attack that shrunk the policy space because clearly the Mujuru factor had a different agenda of grabbing power," said Prof Moyo.

"The people associated with that cabal were not preoccupied with policy implementation, they were preoccupied with power grabbing and it is very dangerous the day after an election to be preoccupied with grabbing power. It quickly builds inertia in the system especially where you can create impressions that have trappings of believability."

He said a number of members of the Mujuru cabal were crafty in creating falsehoods to the effect that she was anointed to take over from President Mugabe singling out Mr Didymus Mutasa and Mr Rugare Gumbo as peddlers of those lies.

Prof Moyo said the overtures by the Mujuru cabal after the elections to the 2014 Congress in December frustrated the Government's policy implementation drive with some deliberately working against the country.

"One thing if you have noticed about Zimbabwean politics unlike politics in some other more progressive, more dynamic countries is that if you are opposing something and in this case if you are opposing a leader who is in charge and has been entrusted with the power to be in charge by the people, the only way the politicians in Zimbabwe have worked out to do is make sure nothing works.

"This is a very Zimbabwean thing, opposition in Zimbabwe whether its internal to parties or external is driven by a negative logic that be against everything that is good and be for nothing yourself. That's the only chance you have of taking over, you can only take over if it's not working. If it's working the bar is very high because you have to promise better."

Prof Moyo said Mujuru while supposed to supervise success in the implementation of policy, was brewing failure in the Government as stones were thrown against indigenisation, a cornerstone of the Zanu-PF manifesto which had won the party elections resoundingly.

Besides the two factors, Prof Moyo said the Government's policy implementation drive was affected by the succession politics within Zanu-PF which he said were more destructive than the Western imposed sanctions. He, however, said for the remaining period before the elections, the Government would not allow any elements to throw spanners in its policy implementation drive.

Prof Moyo said housing, SMEs, agriculture and innovations in science and technology were expected to create the promised jobs and boost the economy.