G40 fears Mnangagwa is shoo-in

By Gift Phiri

The embattled Generation 40 (G40) faction — which is rabidly opposed to Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa succeeding President Robert Mugabe — fears the Chirumhanzu-Zibagwe MP was close to wearing the presidential crown through an alleged mix of a silent power grab and State capture.

This comes after Cabinet minister and politburo member Jonathan Moyo — an alleged G40 kingpin said in a recent presentation to the Sapes Trust — that Mnangagwa was on the verge of taking power, and must be subjected to tough scrutiny.

Mnangagwa and Team Lacoste are involved in a fierce tussle for supremacy in the warring ruling Zanu PF with the G40 — which is strongly opposed to his mooted presidential ambitions.

Moyo said “the so-called Lacoste or Team Lacoste …is presenting itself in general and its candidate, VP Mnangagwa in particular, as a shoo-in.”

“If you read things, talk to people, analyse their behaviour, the message is that the balance of forces has shifted and that’s what we are going to see going forward is the assumption of power by Team Lacoste.

“And if you go to the braais — where they have their braais — because these are masters of whispers, you will find them quite excited saying ‘Tapinda Tapinda’ (we are shoo-in), this is their new song and their refrain when you start developing an interest ‘Tapinda Tapinda’ what are they talking about? Then they say ‘Mudhara Achauya’,” Moyo said referring to Jah Prayzah’s hit song.

“The whisper from this earlier in the year was, especially this year that ‘something was going to happen in April’.”

Moyo alleged this coincided with the chorus for Zanu PF national commissar Saviour Kasukuwere’s ouster, which got louder in March, when nine provinces demanded his ejection from the ruling party, in a plot he alleged was engineered by Team Lacoste.

“But in March, something started happening, the heat was turned on the Zanu PF national commissar, …Kasukuwere, who faced dubious votes of no confidence under the absurd claims that he had set up parallel structures to topple President Mugabe,” Moyo said.

“This was real and it was pushed with vigour and with the seriousness that caused observers and even members of the party to believe that something was happening and this was the trigger point.

“It was supposed to happen in a matter of days but it became prolonged such that it took eight weeks or two months and as it developed, it assumed what the whispers started saying or describing as the momentum.

“In fact, as we sit here, we are somewhere along the momentum, the build-up or surge, because a momentum or a build-up or a surge must lead to something.”

Moyo said it is a matter of public record that Team Lacoste defines power as “chinhu chedu” or “our thing.”

“If people start saying ‘ndechedu ichi’ (its ours), ‘who are you, you were not there.’ It’s a problem.

“Well, how can the people who were born in 1980 and who are 37-years-old now, how could they have been there?”

He said Mnangagwa’s Team Lacoste had declared itself to be Zimbabwe’s “stockholders” not even stakeholders, under a template of entitlement.

The Tsholotsho North MP said “it’s not good politics to frame yourself in a patently unconstitutional manner to say, ‘I’m the stockholder and you are not so listen to me’.”

The kingpin of the G40 — comprised mainly Zanu PF Young Turks — claimed Team Lacoste has shown a surprising hostility to the youth, “who are not only the vanguard of the party today but who are also the critical pool from which the skills necessary to industrialise and modernise Zimbabwe must emerge or trained and deployed.”

“There is now an instinctive hatred of the youth: ‘havana gwara’ (they are disconnected from the past) they don’t know who the stakeholders are, they don’t respect the stakeholders but meanwhile there is clear and present evidence that they respect the leader of the party and the leader of the country,” he said referring to youths interfacing with Mugabe in planned countrywide rallies.

“The current situation where the so-called Team Lacoste uses a whisper campaign to carry out a silent power grab is harmful to the values and aspirations of the nationalist project and it is harmful to our new Constitution,” Moyo said.

“If you promise us that you are taking power and you say join or you will be left behind or crushed, then you must be subjected to scrutiny.”

The Zanu PF secretary for science and technology claimed Mnangagwa has unduly influenced pillars of State to shore up his succession bid.

“There are lot of things that have happened in a number of key national or State institutions that not only smack of a capture of these institutions by the so-called Team Lacoste but which things are detailed in the ‘Blue Ocean’ document and the very revealing British magazine, the New Statesman,” he said.

In December, a respected British magazine, New Statesman, portrayed Mnangagwa as a firm favourite to succeed Mugabe.

It also argued that a Mnangagwa presidency could extricate the country from its current economic rot — going on to highlight his profile rather glowingly.

“He (Mnangagwa) is sharp, organised and business-savvy, more pragmatic and less ideological than Mugabe. And, unlike the president (Mugabe), he understands the urgent need for reform, if only so that he can pay the security forces and fill the trough at which his Zanu PF comrades guzzle,” the New Statesman said.

Former Cabinet minister David Coltart also told the same magazine that Mnangagwa had a better understanding of the economy than most of his Zanu PF colleagues, including Mugabe.

“For all his historical problems he (Mnangagwa) understands the running of the economy better than Mugabe, better than most Zanu PF politicians,” he was quoted.

The Tsholotsho North Zanu PF MP said academics were “not analysing the implications of these things but key state institutions are involved: public media and judicial institutions.”

The voluble minister said “time has come to expose and dispense with the myth entertained not only by the so-called Team Lacoste but also by others including some in countries like Britain, that Vice President Mnangagwa is the designated successor or that he is the only successor on the verge of taking over anytime now.”

“The position is that there is no vacancy. There is no vacancy in the Office of the President in the party or in the government,” Moyo fumed.

“Where there is no vacancy, any talk or activity of succession such as contained in the ‘Blue Ocean’ document and in the New Statesman interview is by definition subversive.” Daily News