Jonathan Moyo says he almost resigned

By Fungi Kwaramba

Former Higher and Tertiary Education minister has sensationally claimed that the period between December 2014 and November 2017 was like hell for most bureaucrats in former president Robert Mugabe’s government to the extent that he almost tendered his resignation.

Moyo, who is living in self-imposed exile following the military coup that toppled Mugabe in November last year, said the putsch was once foiled in 2017 but continued brewing underneath the surface.

“By this time, 1st of November, last year the coup was in progress. The rehearsals had been done with a number of options.

“People knew. Attempts, which of course ultimately failed, were being made to neutralize the coup. The real drama started in earnest on 4 November in Bulawayo,” Moyo revealed on Twitter.

On November 4 last year former first lady Grace Mugabe was booed by a section of Zanu PF youths at a rally in Bulawayo that was backing then vice president Emmerson Mnangagwa to succeed her husband, aged 94.

Since that day, the tables began to turn against the former powerful first couple.

But according to Moyo another coup had been attempted in 2017.

“And on the first day of the month of November, whose ‘Mbudzi Curse’ was inscribed by Rhodesia’s UDI on the month’s 11th day in 1965 and by the coup that was not a coup on the month’s 15th day in 2017, it bears repeating once again that coups beget one another. Camera rolling,” Moyo said in the wake of revelations that the alliance between the military and civilians who united to remove Mugabe is now unravelling.

The former top flier who many would think was on cloud nine after Mnangagwa’s expulsion last November claimed on the micro-blogging platform that he almost handed his resignation letter to Mugabe.

“One day, maybe sooner rather than later, your fairy-tale will be sobered by the discovery of the excruciatingly painful and tragic reality of the time.

“For now, just know that the period 1 Dec 2014 to 24 Nov 2017 was hell. On 8 Nov 2017, I drafted a resignation letter. I wanted out,” Moyo said in response to an observation that the Generation 40 (G40) faction, which backed Mugabe and his then powerful wife Grace, was having it all around this time last year before the insurrection.

Moyo left the country fleeing for dear life as he was said to be among those who were wanted by the army on account of being “criminals surrounding” Mugabe.

A key member of the vanquished G40 faction that almost succeeded in stopping Mnangagwa’s rise to power only to be thwarted by a military intervention, Moyo is one of the few people with first hand details of what happened before Mugabe’s graceless fall. Daily News