Norton by-election: How Zanu PF lost it

By Tatenda Dewa | Harare Bureau |

The Zanu PF national commissar, Saviour Kasukuwere, on Saturday conceded through Twitter that Temba Mliswa had won the Norton by-election held on the same day.

Even as the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) was yet to officially announce the mini-poll results, reliable reports indicated that Mliswa had won by more than a thousand votes.

The temperamental independent candidate ran against the ruling party’s Ronald Chindedza and the National Constitutional Assembly’s David Chingodzo.

On 10 June 2015, Mliswa had contested another volatile by-election in Hurungwe West.

He held the same seat from July 2013 until Zanu PF expelled him for reportedly siding with Joice Mujuru, President Robert Mugabe’s deputy for a decade from 2004 who was also booted out over an alleged plot to topple the 92-year-old statesman.

The run-up to the Hurungwe by-election was characterised by violence, massive intimidation, vote-buying and bungling by ZEC, which allegedly failed to properly vet Mliswa’s rival from Zanu PF, Keith Guzah.

Mliswa lost to Guzah by close to 2,000 votes, but insisted the poll was a big farce.

Slightly more than a year after the forgettable Hurungwe West poll, Mliswa ran again in a different constituency within the same Mashonaland West province.

He pulled a shocker by winning an election that Mugabe and his deputy, Emmerson Mnangagwa, had said must be won by Zanu PF at all costs, “by all means necessary”.

A quick recap of how the Norton seat fell vacant is useful to partly understand how Mliswa won.

The then Norton Member of Parliament, Christopher Mutsvangwa, was in July this year expelled from Zanu PF.

He is the current chairman of the war veterans association and has a tendency to think very loudly, something that Mugabe does not like at all.

He accused Mugabe’s wife, Grace, of conflating national and bedroom politics, when she was meddling with her husband’s work.

So they set up a kangaroo court, tried him in absentia and found him guilty of misconduct for bringing the party and the presidency into disrepute by badmouthing Mugabe’s wife.

Mutsvangwa said he did not mind that, and that happened as the war veterans movement was increasingly getting vocal against Mugabe.

They held a meeting at Raylton Club in Harare and a communique that described Mugabe as a genocidal and geriatric dictator was distributed at the end.

This is already in the public domain of course, but Mutsvangwa and the war vets are clear in their support for Mnangagwa as Mugabe’s successor.

This puts them at loggerheads with the other faction in Zanu PF, Generation 40 (G40) to which busybodies like Jonathan Moyo, Kasukuwere and Grace belong.

Also from the same camp is Phelekezela Mphoko, the somewhat dour if controversial man that Mugabe plucked from nowhere in 2014 and made him a co-vice president.

It is doubtful that Mphoko and Mnangagwa, who leads the Team Lacoste faction, have ever shared tea and a joke since they were made vice presidents in late 2014.

This is, indirectly and directly, one of the major reasons why Mliswa won and Zanu PF lost the Norton by-election.

In other words, Zanu PF factionalism shaped the results of the by-election, and the below is how that happened.

It is likely that Mutsvangwa, war veterans, Mnangagwa himself and members of Team Lacoste were left bitter when the war vets’ chairman was expelled first from his ministerial post as the head of ex-combatants welfare and as a lawmaker.

It is clear that Mutsvangwa’s expulsion was at the behest of G40, so Lacoste must have bandaged their wound, but it remained fresh.

To make it worse, Mundedza was a G40 imposition, and Team Lacoste remembered that throughout.

In the scheme of things, there is a great possibility that Mutsvangwa used his rapport with a substantial fraction of the Norton electorate to sabotage Zanu PF by either voting for Mliswa or just staying away from the booths.

It is no coincidence that almost all the campaigning for Mundedza was done by G40 marksmen, namely Mphoko, Kasukuwere, Jonathan Moyo and Patrick Zhuwao, Mugabe’s nephew and Indigenisation minister.

Mnangagwa only came in at the eleventh hour, mumbling something about the by-election being a must-win for Zanu PF.

That could just have been a masking game, to cover his back lest he got accused of sabotaging the by-election, even if that would be true.

In this sense, Team Lacoste members from Norton must have just gone ahead and voted Mliswa.

After all, he did not go away with Mujuru who formed Zimbabwe People First (ZimPF), and he might one day return to beloved Zanu PF as a useful Mnangagwa ally.

War veterans could also have gone to Norton at night to decampaign Mundedza.

Mliswa, though, has more than Team Lacoste to thank.

He also found a valuable ally in the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai (MDC-T).

Ahead of the by-election, thousands of party regalia donning MDC-T supporters converged at a stadium to give support to Mliswa.

Led by the shrewd and energetic MDC-T co-vice president, Nelson Chamisa, the supporters were hounded out with police teargas and Zanu PF youths’ knobkerries and volleys of stones.

But the police and the youths did not bring teargas or stones to the polling stations on Saturday, giving a chance to MDC-T voters to cast their ballots in favour of Mliswa.

This is not to take away everything from Mliswa, of course.

He is a fearless fighter and matched Zanu PF violence shoulder to shoulder and, where ruling party youths threw stones, his supporters hurled boulder, so to speak.

That certainly must have put him in good stead, earning the respect of both his own and opposition supporters for his bravery. Nehanda Radio