Moyo savages Lacoste, again

By Blessings Mashaya

Voluble Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo has once again taken deadly aim at the supporters of Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, branding them as thieves in a video which was released this week although it was recorded in the run-up to the warring ruling Zanu PF’s Masvingo conference.

Well-placed ruling party sources who spoke to the Daily News said the video showed that hopes the former liberation movement’s ugly tribal, factional and succession brawls would subside ahead of the eagerly-anticipated 2018 national polls were wholly misplaced.

“It’s aluta continua (the struggle continues) my friend. As I’ve told you before, this is a fight to the bitter end, actually to the death,” a Zanu PF politburo member said.

Moyo — whom insiders claim is a key member of the party faction that is rabidly opposed to Mnangagwa succeeding President Robert Mugabe and which goes by the moniker Generation 40 (G40) — also said bluntly in the cheeky video that has been uploaded on YouTube that those behind his ongoing legal troubles were corrupt “fugitives”.

“Look, history is full of lots of examples where some people have the worst backgrounds, real proper thieves. These people think they are clever …

“But while we are busy working, these guys were busy putting fugitives in this organisation, a convicted criminal in that organisation (presumably the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission) and then one day when you are least expecting it, these fugitives come running and say haaaaaa!

“Come on, our country deserves better than that. We can’t have (these) thieves,” Moyo thunders in the November 25 video.

The background to the Tsholotsho North MP and Zanu PF politburo member’s rant was probably the slew of corruption charges running into millions of dollars which he faces, and where Zacc claims that this relates to alleged fraudulent activities at the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (Zimdef) which falls under his purview.

Moyo has in turn accused Mnangagwa’s Zanu PF supporters, known as Team Lacoste, as well as key players at Zacc of waging a factionally-driven war against him and other alleged G40 kingpins.

He has particularly singled out Zacc commissioner and its chairman of investigations, Goodson Nguni, as playing a prominent role in this regard, further questioning his fitness to hold office at the anti-graft body, amid claims that he has a pending fraud case in South Africa.

Nguni’s detractors say he defrauded the South African Post Office of tens of thousands of rands while he was employed there as a regional manager, a charge which he denies.

In addition, critics of the country’s acting Prosecutor General, Ray Goba, who last month said Moyo had a case to answer in his alleged fraud case at Zimdef, point to the prosecutions chief’s conviction in Namibia after he was found guilty of attempting to defeat the course of justice, and where he was slapped with a N$2 000 fine (about US$140), or six months’ imprisonment.

To complicate matters further, Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko and Local Government minister Saviour Kasukuwere,  both of whom are also linked to the G40, told gathered party supporters at a campaign rally in Norton in October that it was wrong for Zacc to charge Moyo with corruption.

“Shefu kana muchitisungira kutora mari kudefender hurumende (If you arrest us for using money to defend the government) we are prepared to go to prison. Arrest us now.

“But we will never be afraid to defend Zanu PF, to defend Mugabe and to defend the revolution,” Kasukuwere declared.

“(Goodson) Nguni you are a sell-out. I am saying it here and if there is a problem I am saying it now. Nguni you are a sell-out. You want to come out with dockets against your own party members? … We are watching you.

“Wakanga uri we MDC (you once belonged to the MDC). You are not a Zanu PF man. We are not going back. We are angry and we are warning you,” the fuming Kasukuwere added.

Mphoko told the same gathering that Zacc was being disrespectful to Mugabe by pursuing Moyo, also launching a withering attack on Nguni and describing him as a thief.

“This Nguni being talked about, who is he?  He is a crook, a thief, a someone wanted by Interpol … and then that man wants to arrest a Zimbabwean.

“To arrest someone who is supporting Zanu PF, you cannot do it unless you are a Rhodesian. Chekai munhu uyu (watch and vet this guy). How can you challenge your president? You cannot do that unless you are a Rhodesian,” Mphoko thundered.

In his video message, Moyo also claimed that an unnamed Zanu PF bigwig had allegedly stashed millions of pounds in a British bank.

“Some of them have 30 million British pounds stuck there not $400 000, 30 million British pounds! And you ask yourself how did this guy get 30 million pounds and what work he does,” Moyo who has had several run-ins with Mnangagwa and his allies, all of whom he describes as successionists — said.

He also once again suggested that the Midlands godfather and his military backers knew where the missing $15 billion diamond money was.

Many analysts and Zanu PF insiders say it is Mugabe’s continued hold on power that has led to the ruling party’s deadly ructions, which have seen brutal purges of hundreds of the party’s senior officials, including former Vice President Joice Mujuru in the run-up to the party’s sham December 2014 congress.

Despite giving Mujuru the boot, and with Zanu PF’s succession issue remaining unresolved, the ruling party has remained seriously divided, with the G40 now locked in a fight to the death with Team Lacoste.

At Zanu PF’s recent annual conference that was held in Masvingo — which was meant to scuttle Mnangagwa’s higher ambitions — the party’s women’s league, which is led by powerful First Lady Grace Mugabe pulled a stunner when it revived its 2015 resolution to have the former liberation movement’s constitution amended to reinstate the women’s quota clause.

This is despite the fact that in the run-up to the conference, the women’s league had seemingly made a dramatic U-turn about this demand, saying repeatedly that they were no longer pursuing the resolution which was supposed to have been implemented by the end of this year.

According to the women’s league resolution, the party is supposed to drop either Mnangagwa or Mphoko, to make way for a woman — a call which has put Mnangagwa’s camp on the edge as its foes, the G40, slowly regroup after months of being on the back foot. Daily News