Bona tell your father to quit – Fired Zanu PF youth leader tears into Mugabe, Grace

By Tatenda Dewa | Harare Bureau |

Godfrey Tsenengamu, the former ruling Zanu PF youth chairman for Mashonaland Central has urged President Robert Mugabe’s daughter, Bona Mugabe-Chikore to advise her father to quit and her mother, Grace, to be more tactful in politics.

Tsenengamu was addressing journalists in Harare on Thursday.

He was this week booted out of Zanu PF for alleged indiscipline as factional fights centred on Mugabe’s succession continue to rage.

The former youth leader has already claimed that he was among the many factional storm troopers that were coached on how to smear former vice president, Joice Mujuru, who was subsequently expelled from Zanu PF in early 2015 and has formed an opposition party, Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF).

“Bona, some of us look at you as the most reasonable and reserved member of your father’s family and I am sorry to drag you into these political issues but I have no option,” said Tsenengamu.

“Please, engage daddy and make him see basis for resigning. If he cannot realise this truth that he has passed his best-before-date and that has played it wrong this time as things are falling apart around him, then he will have no one else to blame as he faces an embarrassment in the coming polls,” said Tsenengamu at the media briefing.

Recently, Acie Lumumba, a young former Zanu PF member who headed the party’s tourism portfolio in Harare province, verbally attacked Mugabe with the F**word and is under trial as disillusionment with the 92 year-old leader grows.

Mugabe’s erstwhile foot-soldiers who helped him terrorise critics, the war veterans, publicly described their former icon as a “genocidal dictator”.

Tsenengamu said it would be difficult for Mugabe to get a resting place at the national Heroes Acre which is reserved for Zanu PF loyalists and at which the president has officiated for a long time during burials since he had spoilt his liberation legacy by overstaying in power.

He did not spare Grace, who led the war against Mujuru and is now reported to be leading a faction, Generation 40 (G40) that is fiercely opposing the possible elevation of Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa to president when Mugabe finally leaves office.

“Bona, you were in China and had the opportunity to learn how Chairman Mao’s legacy almost went to nothing because of his second and younger wife who was then working in collaboration with the Gang of Four like Dr Mama (Grace Mugabe) is doing with the Generation 40 and I do not think you would want to see dad going the same way.

“Advise Dr Mama to become sober and calm down. “She needs to mend relations for we may end up, at some point, asking her to explain the source of her monies which she is using to construct properties in Mazowe when government cannot afford to pay civil servants,” added Tsenengamu.

Grace was awarded a doctoral degree by the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) in 2014 after a few months of study, and runs an orphanage and other properties in Mazowe district in the Mashonaland Central province where Tsenengamu was a youth leader. Nehanda Radio