Early this week on Monday at 9 am, Emmerson Mnangagwa hosted selected media editors at State house at a choreographed event specifically designed for him to publicly reiterate his lie that he is a constitutionalist, all in a desperate quest to douse the raging party flames by the rival Zanu PF military faction that wants him to go now.
Deputy Chief secretary (Communications) in the Office of the President and Cabinet George Charamba, himself an acolyte of the military faction but who must be seen to be doing his job of defending ED, deliberately staged the media editors’ event to give Mnangagwa a platform to push back the military faction’s call that is being fronted by one Blessed Geza who has sonorously called Mnangagwa to order for using proxies to push for the unconstitutional extension of his term to 2030.
At the choreographed event on Monday, Mnangagwa feebly reiterated his call that he is a constitutionalist and will not go beyond his constitutionally prescribed term limit.
However, Mnangagwa dismally failed to show his sincerity.
Trabablas failed in absolute terms to use the event to unequivocally order the halting of the motion in Parliament and to stop the Politburo members who are all over the country exhorting party structures to support this unconstitutional Presidential term extension.
Instead, Monday’s platform exposed Mnangagwa as insincere and as a liar who is wont to double-speak and (un) strategic ambiguity by indicating left when he apparently wants to turn right.
If Mnangagwa were sincere, as the first secretary of the party, he was supposed to use Monday’s event to publicly call for an immediate stop to all these televised party party events across the party districts exhorting all party structures to support the unconstitutional extension of his term.
He did not do this but was instead flimsy and indecisive about the whole sordid saga, preferring only to say he will “persuade” his persuaders not to do so.
Asked specifically on whether he would extend his term if asked to do so, Mnangagwa, in his own feeble attempt at dishing out a clever polemic to the gathered editors, said he would persuade his persuaders not to persuade him to act in breach of the Constitution.
For God’s sake, a sincere and constitutional leader of a party that is on the verge of doing something unconstitutional does not have to persuade anyone!.
The leader simply has to stop the Constitutional breach by publicly halting, with immediate effect, all these assemblages of unconstitutionality that are being convened by senior party leaders across the country.
Mnangagwa also failed to use the platform, to speak robustly against high-scale avarice and graft and to distance himself from the barons of corruption, the so-called zvigananda, to use his deputy Army General (Rtd) Constantino Chiwenga’s war-time diction.
Curiously, Mnangagwa was openly hostile to the question of Wicknell Chivayo being his front. He first feigned a look at the upper front of his body, pretending to take the word “front” literally, before tellingly saying to the questioner that Chivayo was using his own money.
Mnangagwa then upped his defence of the ex-convict by protectively and insulatively describing Chivayo as a philanthropist.
On the same day, Chivayo was braggingly telling the public on his X account that through his Father Christmas shenanigans, he was not only singing for his supper but for his breakfast and lunch as well.
It was very clear to whom he was singing and Mnangagwa dismally failed to use Monday’s event to shake himself off Chivayo’s antics by mellowly couching him as a self-made philanthropist.
This week, I give just five reasons that show that Mnangagwa was lying and was not being honest on his word that he was a Constitutionalist who did not want his term extended:
- Failure to blast members of his party calling for term extension
As stated earlier, Mnangagwa showed his insincerity by failing to use Monday’s event to publicly chastise and call to order Ziyambi Ziyambi and other Politburo members by ordering them to immediately stop exhorting party members across the party districts to support an unconstitutional misadventure.
He should have also publicly called on Energy Mutodi to halt his mischievous motion in Parliament.
Tellingly, he did neither but instead softly and euphemistically chose to describe these merchants of unconstitutionality as mere “persuaders.”
- The ZBC’s tell-tale double messaging
On the same day that the ZBC beamed live Mnangagwa’s State House event where ED said he was a Constitutionalist and would not extend his term, the same ZBC, in the same news clip on the same day, had a rider streaming across the bulletin informing viewers that all was set for the Constitutional amendment seeking to extend the President’s term to sail through.
This was unhelpful to ED’s intended message and grossly exposed his insincerity.
That the ZBC, a known Zanu PF megaphone, would undermine (or is it overmine) Mnangagwa’s constitutionalist stunt on the same day and in the same bulletin was significantly telling.
It exposed the true position that Mnangagwa wanted his term extended and all else was just a stunt and a theatric.
- Failure to stop the party conference from adopting an unconstitutional resolution
As the Zanu PF first secretary and a lawyer for that matter, ED in October last year presided over a party conference in Bulawayo which passed and adopted a patently unconstitutional resolution.
It is telling that ED allowed the resolution to be adopted first before he deployed Patrick Chinamasa to slam it and to describe it as unimplementable.
Indeed, it remains telling that the constitutionalist allowed the unconstitutional resolution to go through the processes and to be adopted before claiming it was unconstitutional therefore unimplementable.
ED acted much like the leader of restaurant guests who order a meal and then upon being served, claim being allergic to the very meal they have ordered.
Indeed, Mnangagwa stands akin to a parent who drives his family to a game park but upon arrival, drives back, on the grounds that his children are too young and may develop palpitations or heart seizures upon seeing lions, zebras and elephants.
If Mnangagwa were sincere and honest, he had the powers as the first secretary of the party to make this unconstitutional resolution suffer a stillbirth before adoption at the party conference in Bulawayo.
That he did not do so is telling in where he truly stands regarding that resolution.
- The all-out attempt to incriminate and arrest Geza
If Mnangagwa truly doesn’t want his term extended as he says, then why this all-out and desperate attempt to arrest Geza, who is saying the same message?
Mnangagwa on Monday spoke about a camp in the party that had people who dressed in Zanu PF regalia but were not really Zanu PF.
He appeared to insinuate that it is this “un”Zanu PF camp that was trying to make him a life President, which then inadvertently puts him in the same camp as Geza, who is saying No to a Presidential term extension.
So if Geza and Mnangagwa are in the same camp of constitutionalists, why is the former being hunted down like a common criminal?
Just why is Mnangagwa’s fellow Constitutionalist on the run while the camp of anti-constitutionalists led by Ziyambi Ziyambi and others is roaming scot-free?
It all exposes the fact that ED was not being sincere. He is simply a certified liar.
- ED’s litany of unconstitutional acts
Mnangagwa says he is a Constitutionalist but some two weeks ago, this column cited just 10 of his litany of Constitutional breaches since 2017 that show that the man is a serial Constitutional delinquent.
The cited Constitutional breaches included the very coup that birthed his initial entry to the Presidency, his unconstitutional Cabinet appointments that he later reversed both in 2017 and in 2018, his blatantly unconstitutional extension of Luke Malaba’s term, his capture of the judiciary and independent Commissions, including the ZACC and the ZEC, his deliberate trammelling of the sacred notion of separation of powers, his recently introduced unconstitutional land tenure system and his decision at some point to appoint a serving army commander into the Zanu PF politburo, among other Constitutional breaches.
The man is simply no constitutionalist and his legacy is replete with several breaches of the supreme law of the land.
Conclusion
Mnangagwa is simply a liar and Monday’s meeting with selected editors exposed his lack of sincerity around the unconstitutional Presidential term extension.
Not only did he fail to extricate himself from the doyens of corruption on the land but he also dismally failed to show his fidelity to constitutionalism by calling for an immediate halt of both the Parliamentary motion and the mischievous party gatherings across the country that are playing bridesmaid to a purely unconstitutional misadventure to extend his Presidential term.
Mnangagwa did not call anyone to order and was not even taking the matters seriously, given his demeanour and deportment during Monday’s meeting with the chosen editors.
The man is simply a certified liar who is convinced that on this crucial matter, he can take a whole nation up the garden path.
Well, let’s wait and see.
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