Last week Mugabe agreed to
meet the war vets who have found themselves being kicked round like a football
in Zanu PF’s factious factional wars. The war vets have set Mugabe an
impossible task ahead of the meeting; the want him to fire VP Phelekezela
Mphoko and seven other top G40 faction leaders including Mugabe’s pompous
nephew Minister Patrick Zhuwao!
"The war veterans are the owners of Zanu PF. Zanu PF cannot afford to ignore its forces in as much as Zanu and Zapu could never have ignored Zipra and Zanla," said Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans' Association (ZNLWVA) spokesperson Douglas Mahiya.
"We are the foundation of the party and the party must take what we say very seriously. The vote of no-confidence has been passed and must be executed, that is what we expect."
Ever since the demise of Joice Mujuru and her supporters when Grace Mugabe and her G40 faction turned their attention on Mnangagwa and his faction the dog-eat-dog fight has been fierce but never has the stakes been this high! Ever since Mugabe unleashed the Police with tear-gas and water cannon on the war vets led by then Minister Chris Mutsvangwa, a known Mnangagwa loyalist, the war vets have been on a war footing, itching for a fight!
Robert Mugabe now has a hell
of fight in his hands; his own continued rule is at stake here!
Zanu PF is imploding
because the party has become so autocratic it has moved from a one-party
dictatorship to a one-man dictatorship and, as if that was not bad enough, the
one-man dictator has become nothing more than a ventriloquist dummy in his very
ambitious wife's hands. Ever since Grace Mugabe burst on the political stage in
August 2014, she has made no secret that she wanted to succeed her husband as
president and she will be telling what to do to ensure her dream comes true.
Grace told her husband to "baby dumped" Joice Mujuru and her supporters in 2014 and he did. With Mujuru out of the way Grace and her newly formed G40 faction turned their attention on the next threat to her presidential ambition, Emmerson Mnangagwa his allies. Sadly after a year and half of hurrying and harassing Mnangagwa and his allies, the G40 faction has still remained too weak and feeble to deliver a knockout punch on their rivalry faction.
Grace told her husband to "baby dumped" Joice Mujuru and her supporters in 2014 and he did. With Mujuru out of the way Grace and her newly formed G40 faction turned their attention on the next threat to her presidential ambition, Emmerson Mnangagwa his allies. Sadly after a year and half of hurrying and harassing Mnangagwa and his allies, the G40 faction has still remained too weak and feeble to deliver a knockout punch on their rivalry faction.
The Mnangagwa faction,
unlike the Mujuru faction before it, has been able to fight back again and
again. The war vet’s vote of no confidence against VP Mphoko and demand for seven
senior G40 leaders to be fired from the party is without the Mnangagwa faction’s
cleanest and heaviest direct body blow on G40 and indirect blow on Grace and
Mugabe himself. Depending how Mugabe hands this, it may well prove to be the KO
punch for G40, Grace and Mugabe himself!
Grace Mugabe has surprised
many people at how close she has come to seizing the presidency in the short
period of two years. Her meteoric rise through the ranks was because she came
riding the dragon, Robert Mugabe, whom every
in Zanu PF feared and did not dare question why everyone else had to take the
torturous high road to office whilst she did not.
Grace has come close to
inheriting the crown but she will never wear it. She has a loud and foul mouth
but no brain hence the reason why she has failed to attract any followers in
her G40 faction. Grace’s Achilles’ heel was that she failed to realise that people
feared the dragon she was riding but had nothing but contempt for the one
riding it.
Indeed, when the people realized
it was her telling Mugabe what to do they even became emboldened by their fury.
The nation will never forget Jabulani Sibanda’s contemptuous dismissal of Grace’s
attempts to launch her political career as a “bedroom coup”. And now the war
vets are publicly slapping Mugabe in the face with this unprecedented demand
for him to destroy his wife’s G40 faction!
If Mugabe was to fire Mphoko
and the other G40 members that would constitute the greatest political climb down
of his political career and, worse still, he will not have a single ally left in
the party and government. He will be left with no choice but to resign!
On the other hand the
war vets will lose face and influence if Mugabe was to defy their demands and
refuse to fire any of the G40 leaders; it will be said Mugabe mollified the war
vets with a piece of meat just as he did with the Zanu PF Youth and Women’s League
members before their respective 2014
conference!
@ Piet
ReplyDeleteThere are two issues here that must be kept separate. There is the issue of war vets like Sibanda and Chinotimba whom Mugabe has used to terrorize the people to help him stay in power. These are thugs who have betrayed the revolution and the nation.
Then there is the issue of the nation giving war vets financial or other assistance. This is a noble idea and the help must be given on the basis of the need, in the past it was the chefs who have received the fattest pay-outs, and what the nation can afford, destroying the nation's economy to benefit a few will not help anyone in the long run as we have seen.
The stakes are high for everyone in the war vets knows it is now or never. The G40 are doing their best to finish Mnangagwa, God knows they been doing their best to finish him up, and claim the prize. Mnangagwa has had his hands tied fearful that any move by him against the G40 may be seen as an attack on Mugabe so every counter attck has been very subtle. Like it or not this has been his best move so far!
ReplyDeleteAs someone not involved in the factional wars, it would have been a lot better for the nation if the Indaba had sought to end Mugabe's tyrannical powers and those of the unruly war vets by forcing both sides to accept the rule of law. Zanu PF could do with serious democratic reforms!
Still, now the war vets have nailed their uncompromising demands to the wall, there for all to see; it is going to be interesting how President Mugabe is going to respond! I do not see him backing down and firing Grace's G40 members and resigning. Watch and learn!
Ever since the "baby dumping" of Mai Mujuru and 150 other bigwigs, the first major explosion to mark the start of Zanu PF implosion there have been other firecracker explosions. I think the war vets' demand will constitute the next big bang.
DeleteIt would have been great if the war vets had demanded real political reforms designed to end Mugabe's dictatorial powers and restore the democratic rights and freedoms of the party mem-bers and povo at large. It would have been a grand visionary move by the war vets but one can-not little-minded people like that, whose hands are covered in all the political dirty they have been doing for Mugabe, to have common sense.
Still the war vets have laid a new charge that will take the Zanu PF implosion to a new level; it may not be the KO punch but whoever lands it will leave the opponent winded! The stakes are very high here the explosion will wake the dead!
“Let me tell you the truth, war veterans were at the heart of Zanu-PF election rigging over the past sixteen years - it's not a secret that Zanu-PF never won an election since 2000," said Frank Badza.
ReplyDeleteThe truth was bound to come out but cause it is impossible to hide the truth for long. The truth about Zanu PF’s tyrannical repression is starting to come out and there is no stopping it now. After years of denying Zanu PF does not rig elections.
It is naive to think that ZPF leaders like Mutasa and Bhasikiti have changed; they are not going to plan any new harassment, beating or murder but only because they know the Police will not be there to help them get away. Elect them back into power and they will have the Police back in their court and it will be back to the bad old days again!
Anyone who supports ZPF is naïve, anyone that is other than Frank Badza who were kicked out of Zanu PF and have nowhere else to go!
At a rally in 1983 Mnangagwa then CIO Minister said “The campaign against the dissidents can only succeed if the infrastructure supporting them is destroyed”.
ReplyDeleteThe wheels of justice turn very slowly but they do turn what VP Mnangagwa 33 years ago is now catching up with him. He can deny saying it but there it is in black and white, he did not deny being misquoted in the Chronicle then but want to do so now!
Mutsvangwa is just a loud mouth who has no brain. He keeps talking of improving the lives of war vets but has failed to accept that the national economy is in total meltdown. The war vets are not the only ones who are suffering the whole nation is suffering because the Zanu PF dictatorship has failed. He keeps wittering about fighting against regime-change, to him keeping Zanu PF in power has become more important that saving the nation and our people from totally unnecessary suffering brought about by Zanu PF misrule.
ReplyDeleteNo my friend, the Chinese got 50% minimum and the rest shared the 50%!
ReplyDeleteBy the way Mugabe alone got $2 billion in 2012 according to Partnership Africa Canada and so when Mugabe said $15 billion was looted in seven years he was lying. The amount looted in probably ten times that.
So Zimbabwe lost $300 billion worth of diamonds.
The Chinese, Israelis, Lebanese, Russians, Indians and other foreigners walked away with $150 billion and the country's big fish shared the $150 billion of which the public got $2.5 billion or less than 1% of the total value!
In February 2014, just a few months before Joice Mujuru was kicked out of Zanu PF, she addressed a Zanu PF Women's League denying that there was corruption in the country. She was specifically denying the stories of CEO of PSMAS Cuthbert Dube and Harare Town Clerk who were getting $500 000 and $40 000 a month yet the respective institutions were failing to the most basic service the members and ratepayers were paying for.
ReplyDeleteNow she is no longer in Zanu PF and thus free to talk without fear of the Official Secrecy Law; she continues to lie. Mugabe has just admitted that $15 billion worth of diamonds were looted from Marange; are we to believe that as VP Mai Mujuru knew nothing of this and her hands are clean?
Frank Badza, a war vet, confessed that war vets have been harassing, beating and even killed opposition supporters to help Zanu PF win elections since 2000. He confessed and asked for forgiveness at a ZPF rally in Masvingo. Would Mai Mujuru want to revise her bull statement that she saw "no vote rigging" she gave to the UK paper a few weeks ago on the subject!
Mai Mujuru, Didymus Mutasa, Kudakwashe Bhasikiti and all the other ex-Zanu PF leaders now in ZPF are all guilty of mismanagement, corruption and brutal political oppression and by denying these things they insult every Zimbabwean, especially those at the coal face of the tragic consequences of 36 years of misrule.
If Mai Mujuru and her ZPF fiends cannot be trusted to come clean of their checked past, a past that is an open book there for all to see; how can the nation trust them not to revert back to their old ways if they are elected back into power. They are not fighting to get back into power to give the nation a clean start but rather to carry on from where they left after they were booted out of Zanu PF. Having claimed they have clean hands, they will only seek to destroy all evidence of their dirty past.
ZPF will never ever implement the democratic reforms the country needs to dismantle the one-party dictatorship and to replace it with a healthy functional democracy. Mai Mujuru and the rest in ZPF are coy about their Zanu PF past because it is in their nature, DNA, to lie and be coy; their true nature of being incompetent, corrupt and tyrannical will come out the minute they are back in office.
We want a democratic Zimbabwe and not a Zanu PF dictatorship in all but name which is what ZPF are offering!