DPM crisis: Mugabe tells Ncube ‘mina angifuni’

President Robert Mugabe has told Professor Welshman Ncube that he will not be sworn in as Deputy Prime Minister to replace Professor Arthur Mutambara, the man he replaced as leader of the smaller MDC faction.

After Ncube met Mugabe on Tuesday after a cabinet meeting the pair had a follow up meeting on Wednesday at which Mugabe sarcastically told Ncube “you can tell your national council that mina (me) as Robert Mugabe angifuni (I don’t want).”

On Monday Mutambara released a statement saying he would not be resigning. On Tuesday Ncube met with Mugabe and his camp also began moves to fire Mutambara at a National Council meeting set for Thursday.

Mutambara reading the game pre-empted this by announcing he had fired Ncube on Wednesday. Ncube as predicted then fired Mutambara on Thursday. Ncube has now finally given up his bid to become Deputy Prime Minister based on Mugabe’s intransigence and point blank statement ‘Mutambara is going nowhere.’

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday new MDC-N Secretary General Priscilla Misihairambwi Mushonga said, “we are now saying given Mugabe’s stance, they [Zanu PF] can have that position that was allocated to us, so that Mutambara becomes their Deputy Prime Minister. We have effectively donated the DPM post and Mutambara to Zanu PF.”

“We want to give Arthur the position that he so desperately wants and hopefully we will have less public fights than we are having because we know it’s driven by him wanting to be Deputy Prime Minister. He said it to me personally,” Mushonga added.