Jonathan Moyo: ‘Hypocrite in Chief’ exposed by Mujuru rant

By Tatenda Dewa | Harare Bureau |

Last weekend, Joice Mujuru, the Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF) leader and Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-) president, Morgan Tsvangirai, appeared in Gweru holding hands.

That was at an MDC-T demonstration in the Midlands capital city, and Mujuru and her followers had also visited Gweru for a rally.

The sight of the two excited many in Zimbabwean opposition politics who viewed it as a gesture towards a coalition that might help dislodge long-ruling President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF party, in power since 1980.

It also jolted Zanu PF whose spindoctors went into overdrive trying to rubbish Mujuru, Mugabe’s former deputy and liberation war fighter who was booted out of the ruling party in early 2015, as a sellout and front for western regime change interests.

Among those peeved by the public appearance of Mujuru and Tsvangirai holding hands was Jonathan Moyo, the current science and education secretary in Zanu PF and former Information minister.

Moyo exhorted members of the elite party organ, the politburo, and the central committee to take note of Mujuru’s decision to hobnob with Tsvangirai, and was angry that she was supping with him after condemning his party in the past.

“With all due respect, comrades—especially those in the politburo and central committee—look at what that Joice who used to denounce MDC is now doing!” wrote Moyo on Twitter.

He was, clearly, rapping Mujuru for becoming a political turncoat.

Many, however, will find his knee jerk criticism of Mujuru abhorable and hypocritical because history is pregnant with examples of his political vacillations.

Moyo now belongs to a Zanu PF faction called Generation 40, which is fighting a fierce war with another led by Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa over the control of the ruling party.

Generation 40 has weirdly thrown its weight behind President Robert Mugabe to stand in the 2018 presidential poll and continue ruling after that.

This is despite the fact that Mugabe will be a creaky 94 in 2018, has presided over the worst political and economic crisis the country has ever known in its 36-year history and has not the smallest clue how to get out of the mess.

Not only that; Moyo, despite his staunch support for Mugabe’s continued rule, was less than a decade ago an angry opponent to the 92-year-old president’s continued rule, a fact that makes him a serious turncoat.

Between 2007 and 2010, a time during which he was out of Zanu PF following an attempted palace coup in which he was part, Moyo rabidly argued against Mugabe.

Moyo, in fact, gained fame as a columnist for rubbishing Mugabe and Zanu PF before 1999.

That year, he fell in love with a party that he had always pounded, when he participated in a constitutional referendum, keenly siding with Mugabe and his government.

He was subsequently made Information minister and took to murdering the media through various forms of legislation, regulations and policies.

But when he was thrown out of government for participating in the Tsholotsho palace coup plot, he rediscovered his pre-1999 mode.

Below are some of his quotations that were run in articles and statements he gave to the independent media.

• “Perennial wisdom from divine revelation and human experience dictates that earthly things great or small beautiful or ugly, good or bad, sad or happy, foolish or wise must finally come to an end. It is from this sobering reality that the end of executive rule has finally come for Robert Mugabe who has had his better days after a quarter of a century in power.”

• That Mugabe must now go is thus no longer a dismissible opposition slogan but a strategic necessity that desperately needs urgent legal and constitutional action by Mugabe himself well ahead of the presidential election scheduled for March 2008 in order to safeguard Zimbabwe’s national interest, security and sovereignty.

• One does not need to be a malcontent to see that, after 25 years of controversial rule and with the economy melting down as a direct result of that rule, Mugabe’s continued stay in office has become such an excessive burden to the welfare of the state and such a fatal danger to the public interest of Zimbabweans at home and in the Diaspora that each day that goes by with him in office leaves the nation’s survival at great risk while seriously compromising national sovereignty.

• The most compelling reasons for Mugabe to resign now have to do with his own fallen standing in and outside the country. The prevalence of unkind jokes about him on text messages and the Internet say it all. Mugabe now lacks the vision, stature and energy to effectively run the country, let alone his party.

• He (Mugabe) is without compassion, maybe because he is now too old, too tired and not in the best of health…From all discernible indications, Mugabe has lost influence and is now viewed with suspicion or cynicism or both by his peers in the Sadc, African Union and across the developing world where he used to enjoy considerable authority.

• President Mugabe has no reason whatsoever to continue in office as that is no longer in his personal interest and is most certainly not in the national interest. He just must now go and the fundamental law of the land gives him a decent constitutional exit that he must take while he is still able to do so to save the nation and preserve his legacy.

• On offer is the self-indulgent leadership of Mugabe who is now too old despite his photogenic makeup, has become very tired, visionless and beleaguered. Mugabe remains in office not because he is in charge of the goings-on in the wider society but largely if not only because of considerations of his personal and family security in a world that is increasingly becoming hostile to former heads of state with unresolved human rights and corruption issues during their rule.

• A leader in this kind of a box in which Mugabe now finds himself tends to invariably construct his own political reality which in turn blunts his ability to tell the difference between winning a popular victory and securing a stolen result at the polls.

• There is no way such a leader can ever enact correct policies even if they smack him on his face.

• No wonder his (Mugabe’s) associates are now unable to distinguish between defending their beleaguered boss as a person and defending his principles, human ideals or policies.

• Although President Robert Mugabe has of late been displaying bravado by ruthlessly attacking in public some Zanu PF contenders for his 27-year tainted rule, such as Joice Mujuru, and unleashing violence against opposition politicians in police cells, while giving the impression that he is still like an invincible lion, the inescapable home truth visible to all and sundry is that he is now behaving like a cornered rat whose quandary is that every escape route it tries is a dead-end.

• If there is one sobering thing that can be unequivocally said about why the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has scandalously delayed the announcement of the March 29 presidential election, it is simply that President Robert Mugabe did not win the election and is now desperately trying to steal the result through an unjustified recount because he does not have any prospect of winning a run-off or a re-run.

• The saying that when you are 40, half of you belongs to the past, and when you are 80 virtually all of you is past material, best describes the stubborn reality facing the 83-year old President Robert Mugabe whose dream to remain in power for life is turning into a terrible nightmare as he finds himself trapped between the frustration of his rejected 2010 plan and his hopeless 2008 re-election bid which would leave him and Zanu PF sitting ducks at polls should presidential and parliamentary elections be held together early next year.

Conveniently, Moyo has forgotten all the views that he held against Mugabe and Zanu PF and now, once again, insists that the president is the best statesman this world has ever had and must rule for ever after! Nehanda Radio