By Mugove Tafirenyika
Disgruntled war veterans have reiterated their strong belief that Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa is the only senior official within the warring Zanu PF with the right balance of “steel” and other requisite attributes to succeed President Robert Mugabe.
This comes as the ruling party faction of ambitious Young Turks — that goes by the moniker Generation 40 (G40), and is strongly opposed to the Midlands godfather succeeding Mugabe — is promoting anew Zanu PF resolutions which could prejudice the VP if they are adopted; including one agitating for one of the party’s VP posts to be reserved for a woman.
However, the secretary-general of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA), Victor Matemadanda, told the Daily News yesterday that all of the resolutions that had been presented in Masvingo last weekend would not be a problem for Mnangagwa.
“You all saw the reception he (Mnangagwa) was given by party supporters in Masvingo. The crowd applauded him when he stood up to chair the conference and this shows how much Zimbabweans love him.
“If G40 thinks that it can use some useless resolutions as their new strategy to fight Mnangagwa, they are losing the plot because it is their own candidates such as (Vice President Phelekezela) Mphoko who will lose,” Matemadanda said.
He said war veterans readily welcomed the call for Zanu PF vice presidents to be elected, on the understanding that all party officials would be subjected to an elective process, including Mugabe himself.
“If vice presidents are supposed to be elected, then that should apply to every other member of the politburo, including the president. We should not hear about other offices being protected by having to be endorsed by provinces, while others are made vulnerable,” Matemadanda said.
The former freedom fighters have over the past two years been caught in the middle of Zanu PF’s seemingly unstoppable tribal, factional and succession wars, in which they have consistently thrown their weight behind Mnangagwa to succeed Mugabe.
In mid July this year, they served Mugabe with divorce papers after they issued a damning communiqué that ended their long-standing relationship with the nonagenarian, witch dated back to the days of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle.
They also warned that blood could be shed in the country if the Midlands godfather did not end up succeeding Mugabe who turns a very mature 93 in February 2017.
This saw their chairman Chris Mutsvangwa being fired from both Cabinet and Zanu PF earlier this year, while many of their other top leaders have also been banished from the ruling party, in addition to being hauled before the courts.
A meeting in April to try and mend relations between the war vets and Mugabe failed to resolve the stalemate, with the former freedom fighters setting difficult conditions for the nonagenarian, including that he ditches alleged G40 kingpins such as Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo and the ruling party’s national political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere.
At the weekend, the angry war veterans also claimed that they had endured unspeakable abuse at the hands of Mugabe since the country’s independence from Britain in April 1980.
ZNLWVA spokesperson Douglas Mahiya said Mugabe had pretended to love them all these years with the sole objective of ensuring that he remained in power.
But analysts told the Daily News yesterday that Mugabe had consolidated his grip on power after the Masvingo conference, and that it would be naïve to think that either of Zanu PF’s two major factions had gained ground in their succession war, despite the excitement that had been triggered by the weekend resolutions.
“Some of the resolutions made will probably remain suggestive until the next congress. To see the resolution that VPs should be elected as an indicator of Mnangagwa’s demise is to assume that Mnangagwa will be running for VP at the next congress, which is not entirely correct,” political analyst McDonald Lewanika said.
“Mugabe also had no obligation to take a position in terms of picking winners and losers for his succession in Masvingo … If anything, Mugabe made it clear that at the very least the party’s leadership composition will stand as it is till the next congress, which is after 2018,” he added.
There was a flutter of excitement on Saturday — at the end of the Masvingo conference — when youths, a section of war veterans and the influential women’s league passed resolutions pushing for the election of the party’s vice presidents, as well as the appointment of a woman VP; moves that insiders said at the time would shut the door on Mnangagwa’s higher ambitions if they were implemented.
The youth league also formally moved for Mugabe, to be declared life president — which would again mean that those angling to take over the reins from the nonagenarian would have to wait for their opportunity much longer. Daily News
