Mugabe's Zanu-PF must bring conspirators to book

There is a group in Zanu-PF that is power-hungry. It hastens after President Mugabe's position while he is still in office. It is insolent and assumes, wrongly, that the President is no longer a factor in Zanu-PF so has created a new centre of power to rival him.

It has a history of misbehaving and having their misbehaviour go unpunished. In the March 2008 elections, it undermined the party and the President by its bhora musango campaign, exemplified by their not-so-hidden support for Simba Makoni and his party.

The faction and its leaders are comfortable working with the opposition and westerners who want to oust Zanu-PF, or if they fail, will be happy to moderate the party's brand of revolutionary politics. They didn't want elections last year, happy to unconstitutionally continue sharing power with the MDCs.

They used money to buy votes in internal elections in the party, starting with last year's provincial elections and followed that up with the youth league elections in August, all in a bid to prepare support bases to propel their faction leader to replace the President.

For some time, he has criticised the group, but refrained from naming the schemers assuming that they would grasp his message and change their ways. The First Lady, Cde Grace Mugabe, during her "Meet the People tour" recently broke from that tradition to drop names and other specifics. Still they would not listen.

We have no doubt that war veterans' leader, Jabulani Sibanda was speaking for them when he mentioned something about a "bedroom or boardroom" coup this week.

"If you want to find me guilty of not attending the First Lady's rallies," he told a daily this week, "I plead guilty on that one and I won't attend unless the programme changes."

His colleagues have similarly shown stiff necks, attacking the First Lady for her "Meet the People tour", clearly resisting her and her message. We saw them in Mashonaland Central, Manicaland and Mashonaland East. Just how they think that an unjustified attack on the First Lady is not an attack on the President and defying her is not defying the President, beats us. They seem to imagine that their faction leaders have grown so powerful that even the President is scared of them.

It is good politics that the President sat back as the group leaders and their runners came out on their own. Of course, he knew them all along, but it is more helpful when they seek themselves out for everyone else to see them than being exposed by someone else.

In our opinion, an apology, which the First Lady suggested during her nationwide rallies, from the factionalists indicating their regret for trying to usurp power from President Mugabe, is inadequate. We have had a long experience with the plotters; they will apologise today and tomorrow they are back to their ways, just as they pretend to love the President in public, but secretly campaign against him. The group must be stopped now, and congress looks too far away!

In eagerly awaited remarks, the President spoke out against them on Tuesday.

"Some are saying I am old and he must go," he said.

"Who made this party what it is today? After what I went through against the whites, the prisons, the bush only to be told by a young person that I should go? No! When time comes I shall tell you. I know those who are saying Mugabe is old are working with the Americans.

"They are saying he is the one blocking us from getting money from them. What has that gotten into your stinking head?

"After all these years of suffering and you sell out just like that! All this oppression you have not learnt that those (Americans) will never be friends with you. They will give little pieces of money for your freedom. Planning, planning, planning dirty tricks against others all the time . . . have you succeeded in the post you are currently holding for you to aspire a bigger post?

"It's wasting our time; we should be in the field working so that when we go to congress, we must go and see how we can be more effective in our practical programmes and not to see who and who I shall push out and where and where I shall go. Zanu-PF as a party, I can assure you is a solid party, we won't allow that nonsense. No rubbish will happen at congress."

These remarks must bring the conspirators to order.