By Xolisani Ncube
Embattled Vice-President Joice Mujuru had grabbed state power – controlling cabinet and both houses of parliament, the Zanu PF state of the party report has claimed.
Presenting the report at the on-going national people’s congress, Speaker of the National Assembly Jacob Mudenda said the beleaguered Mujuru, together with her cabal that included party secretary for administration Didymus Mutasa and transport secretary Nicholas Goche, “corruptly influenced” who to be voted as legislators in 2013, and consequently into cabinet.
“They further similarly cooked party districts and provincial elections, brazenly removing incumbents and imposing their own people where other forms of intrigue would have failed,” Mudenda said in the report.
“They orchestrated sham primary elections ahead of the 2013 harmonised polls, resulting in their domination of both the House of Assembly and the Senate and consequently, the cabinet (sic).”
The report stated that Mujuru, with the aid of Mutasa, attempted to create a paralysed party through their ills and ambition for power.
“Through corruption, extortion and systematic abuse of office, they even got to a point where then VP Mujuru and her cabal controlled the economy, thus defining a parallel centre of power which began to rival and countered the president …including attempts to convene cabinet and the politburo while he was away, against standing rules of both the party and government,” Mudenda averred.
Mujuru, according to President Mugabe and his wife, Amai Mugabe, plotted to kill the president so that she could ascend to the country’s top post.
The speaker said Mujuru was fronting a faction against the president, and not against Justice minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, and that she supported the regime change agenda to unseat the president.
“Nearly all the major activities undertaken by the party’s principal organs during this period (2009-2013)…were characterised by a preoccupation with individual ambition and the quest for positions with little or no reference to party ideology,” the report claimed.
Mujuru, whose political life is in tatters after being told by President Mugabe to join the opposition she worked with, was accused by Mudenda of also dividing war veterans, ex-detainees and war collaborators.
“All activism of the main wing and its women and youth leagues ceased to have any reference to the party’s ideology, instead focusing on removing the incumbents from positions and replacing them with others,” Mudenda averred.
In the countdown to the congress, the First Lady led a campaign exposing Mujuru and her cartel, which included nine provincial chairpersons who now have been deposited off their posts for fanning factionalism and working with Mujuru to overthrow President Mugabe.
Mudenda had no kind words for the outgoing secretary for commissariat, Webster Shamu, whom he accused of being a member of the Mujuru camp, for failing to come up with a work plan and programmes for the party.
“There were no programmes, no files, no membership records or resources, including vehicles which were handed over to it by the predecessors. The only record availed was the number of party districts as at December 2008 which stood at 2 365.
“By December 2014, this number had grown to 2c897 districts, indicating an increase of 532 districts or 22.25% during the period under review,” Mudenda said.
Mujuru and some of her alleged team have snubbed the congress without giving apologies, a move which has angered President Mugabe to an extent that he accused the VP of being a “thief, who sneaked out of the party without a word to the party members”. The Zimbabwe Mail
