Name successor and save country, Mugabe told by war vets

By Tendai Kamhungira

With Zanu PF’s ugly succession wars now the major talking point in Zimbabwe, as the ruling party’s two major factions go relentlessly at each other hammer and tongs, angry war veterans say President Robert Mugabe must choose his successor now to save the country.

This comes as the Zim rot continues to worsen and as Zanu PF’s brawling Generation 40 (G40) and Team Lacoste factions have recently escalated their succession fights, particularly since images showing Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa holding a coffee mug inscribed “I am the Boss”, during a festive season gathering at his Zvishavane rural home, emerged last week.

At the same time, Mnangagwa’s Team Lacoste allies, who include a large cross-section of former freedom fighters, are also ratcheting up their loud calls for Mugabe to retire now and pave way for his long-time aide to take over the reins at both party and government levels.

Speaking to the Daily News yesterday, as Zanu PF’s infighting reaches a poisonous climax, Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) secretary general, Victor Matemadanda, said Mugabe must come clean on his succession plan, as time was no longer on his side considering his advanced age.

Mugabe, the world’s oldest leader and the only ruler that Zimbabweans have known since the country gained its independence from Britain in April 1980, will turn a ripe 93 years old next month.

“People cannot stop to talk about issues that affect their future. They cannot remain docile because they want the president to tell them his exit and succession plan.

“People cannot keep on speculating. They want to know what is going to happen after he (Mugabe) leaves office. They want to know their future and what happens tomorrow.

“We are worried about where the country is going. We are not only concerned about Mugabe, but the totality of what is happening in Zimbabwe,” Matemadanda told the Daily News.

The war veterans have been feuding with Mugabe ever since they broke their 41-year relationship with the nonagenarian mid last year over their worsening plight and the country’s deepening political and economic rot.

Until that time, the fed up ex-combatants had served as Mugabe and Zanu PF’s pillars, waging brutal campaigns against opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC, especially in the bloody elections of 2000 and 2008.

The former freedom fighters’ stunning fallout with Mugabe and Zanu PF saw their chairman Chris Mutsvangwa being fired from both the Cabinet and the ruling party last year, while many of their other top leaders have also since been banished from the imploding former liberation movement, in addition to being hauled before the courts.

A meeting in April to try and mend relations between the war vets and Mugabe failed to resolve the stalemate, with the former freedom fighters setting difficult conditions for the nonagenarian, including that he ditches alleged G40 kingpins such as Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo and the ruling party’s national political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere.

The war vets’ ultimatum to Mugabe to retire comes as there are also growing calls both within Zanu PF and outside the ruling party to retire, with Team Lacoste baying for Mnangagwa to take over.

Expelled former Mashonaland Central youth chairman and a key Mnangagwa ally, Godfrey Tsenengamu, also warned at the weekend that if Mnangagwa did not confront Mugabe and the succession issue now, he risked losing much of the support of his battle-weary followers and other Zimbabweans who were yearning for change.

“ED (Mnangagwa) is too loyal to Mugabe and we can’t eat his loyalty to his leader. We are worried about our future as a younger generation and if what matters to him is his loyalty to Mugabe then they are going to go down together because we can’t vote for Mugabe in 2018.

“People need to understand that this is not about Mnangagwa but our future as a party and a nation. It is not Mnangagwa who is demanding that the succession issue be addressed now, but us as concerned citizens,” Tsenengamu told the Daily News’ sister publication, the Daily News On Sunday, yesterday.

Last week, highly-opinionated businessman-cum-politician, and another avowed Mnangagwa loyalist, Energy Mutodi, also vented along similar lines, imploring Zanu PF to hold an extraordinary congress to choose Mugabe’s successor.

He claimed that Mugabe had become so unpopular in Zanu PF that “99 percent” of the party’s members now wanted him to resign before the eagerly-anticipated 2018 national elections, as there was allegedly no way that the nonagenarian could win elections against popular opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

“Mugabe must retire. What we must be discussing now is how we share power in Zanu PF post-Mugabe,” he said, adding that it would be very embarrassing for Mugabe if he stood for election again and lost.

And like Tsenengamu, Mutodi and Mutsvangwa, former Zanu PF chairman for Mashonaland West province, Temba Mliswa, has also recently suggested that Mugabe should hand over power to Mnangagwa as the ruling party’s succession wars burn ever hotter.

“Zanu PF’s solution to the current economic problems is for the president to step down and Mnangagwa, who is the most senior, to take over.

“Don’t call me a Mnangagwa person, unless there is someone more senior in Zanu PF than Mnangagwa, then you tell me.

“If Mnangagwa does take over, he is going to stop the bleeding in terms of people suffering. We must be cognisant of the fact that the people are suffering,” Mliswa said at the end of last year.

However, Mugabe has studiously refused to name a successor, arguing that his party should rather follow what he sees as a more democratic process, to manage his succession via a congress. Daily News