Last Friday, retired military general Henry Muchena, claiming to represent retired military generals and senior civil servants who are war veterans, penned a passionate epistle to the Speaker of Parliament calling on the controversial Constitutional Amendment Number 3 to be put to a referendum in line with the dictates of the supreme law of the land.
Among the vile intentions of this treasonous Bill is the nefarious proposal to extend the President and Parliament’s terms by a further two years as well as to take away the sacred right of ordinary Zimbabweans to elect their own President.
The Bill instead treacherously proposes that the President will now be elected by Parliament.
The current Constitution is clear that such sweeping changes to the supreme national charter cannot be done outside of two referanda, which referenda the government seeks to avoid at all costs.
In their seismic and stern missive to Parliament, the retired generals are clear that President Emmerson Mnangagwa must stick to his previously stated position of serving only until the expiry of his term in 2028 in line with the dictates of the Constitution.
Tellingly, the retired but feared men and women of hard power make several sullen but important points: they make it clear that they have not rebelled but remain true and loyal cadres of Zanu PF; that the envisaged amendment is a reversal of the liberation ethos and that it was being driven by ambitious and corrupt arrivistes who have hijacked ZANU PF.
Though now a retired military general, detached from the citadel of hard power and no longer an active member of the command element of the country’s military, Henry Muchena is no ordinary man who penned his letter alone after a beer binge.
He is a doyen of hard power; a top securocrat and a key member of a retired command element that has played an active role in the country’s politics from the era of the liberation struggle until and beyond the seismic event of 2017 that ousted former strongman Robert Mugabe.
And when he speaks, especially in a collective sense as he did last week, he is worth listening to.
For many keen observers of the country’s politics, Muchena, though no longer serving, represents the significant position of the Deep State, whose serving members could not publicly articulate the same position as it is at variance with the stated position of the party and government, though it resonates with the people.
And if this observation by many neutrals is true that Muchena was speaking on behalf of the Deep State, then on this one, the feared underground network is on the side of the people and on the right side of history.
Defining the Deep State
The phrase Deep State is literally derived from the Turkish axiom “Derin Devet.”
From the lens of political science, the Deep State can be defined as the impersonal, secretive illuminati that drives the bureaucracy from underground.
Perhaps it is pertinent to state from the outset that for one to be a member of the Deep State, itself a complex amalgam of hard and soft power, one does not necessarily need to be a serving or active member of the bureaucracy or the securocracy.
The Deep State is a shadowy network of raw power within a State or a government and it drives and powers events, including the rise and/or fall of regimes.
The Deep State thus represents the enduring power of a shadowy network of ‘selectorates’ (as opposed to an electorate). It often includes securocratic doyens in the key institutions of the State as well as top bureaucrats and the civilian movers and shakers in the ruling elite.
A key tenet of the Deep State is that it is normally a faceless confederation that usually operates behind the scenes, never on the foreground.
It is a secretive power structure that operates in the shadows but may come to the foreground in key moments when the situation demands that a line be drawn in the sand.
The Deep State therefore refers to secretive elements that normally operate in the shadows but wield and exert control beyond the reach of democratic institutions.
In Zimbabwe, one can surmise that it is this secretive, shadowy structure—-the Deep State—- that rigs elections, that masterminded the violence in the contrived 2008 run off poll and that in 2017 orchestrated the simultaneous fall and rise of Mugabe and Mnangagwa respectively.
And Retired Air Vice Marshall Henry Muchena, who at one time served as the principal director of the ZANU PF Commissariat, was a key henchman in the shadowy team that orchestrated all those defining phases in the country’s politics.
Here, it is pertinent to state that the credentials, power and authority of former military generals may never be truly retired, especially in a complex military State such as Zimbabwe.
It is perhaps dangerous, if not naive, for anyone to assume that Muchena and his fellow retired generals behind this memo only wield stale, nostalgic, yester-year power that ended on the day they left the barracks
It is also pertinent to state that like Muchena, Retired General Engelbert Rugeje, who is among the contingent of retired generals that have not publicly dissociated themselves from last week’s seismic memorandum, also once served the commissariat at the party headquarters as the Zanu PF National Commissar.
Anyway, the Deep State, also commonly known as the “State within the State”, is often a secretive network that moves pieces in the shadows, especially when matters come to a head.
George Charamba, a senior bureaucrat currently serving the Presidency as the Deputy Chief Secretary (Communications), is widely believed to be a key member of Zimbabwe’s Deep State.
It is equally pertinent to restate the public secret that George has tellingly not deployed his narrative-shaping competence in abetting and promoting CAB3.
In the past few years, Mnangagwa has worked hard to try and reconfigure the Deep State, which in some polities has even outlived Presidents and their regimes.
The changes at the apex of the country’s police, intelligence services and military establishments, including the removal and/or demotion of Minnie Chiwenga from the Military Intelligence Department (MID), can all be viewed as part of ED’s relentless efforts to reconfigure the Deep State.
But it remains to be seen whether he has succeeded at annihilating this powerful, shadowy network and recreating it in his own image.
But because the Deep State oftentimes outlives leaders and regimes, I have often told other keen scholars of political science that for me, the Deep State is much like what the black box is to the aviation industry—-an indestructible component that exists in continuum and outlives plane crashes and some such mishaps in the skies!
In Zimbabwe’s case, the war veterans as a constituency are also a significant cog in this powerful network known as the Deep State.
And by explicitly mentioning that his memo represented the collective voice of retired military generals as well as senior bureaucrats who are also war veterans, Muchena was in fact mentioning significant key components that constitute the Deep State.
Perhaps significantly, the Zimbabwe National War Veterans Association led by Ethan Mathibela publicly expressed its full endorsement of Muchena’s public memorandum.
No need for full list of names
The purchased souls of unmitigated political harlotry .that have emerged as the leading pro-2030 choristers are Themba Mliswa and Jonathan Moyo.
The two have publicly demanded the full list of the retired generals on whose behalf Muchena claimed to be speaking.
But then there might be no need to gratuitously provide a hit list.
Given the suspicious deaths of military generals in recent years, including the curious death of retired army general Herbert Chingono who was found dead inside his Mazowe farmhouse a day after Muchena’s stern letter, perhaps it made sense that retired Air Vice Marshall alone would speak face-fully and on record.
In any case, all the retired military generals are known by name!
Finally, and perhaps tellingly, none so far among the known retinue of retired military generals, including Constantino Dominic Guvheya Chiwenga, Phllip Valerio Sibanda and Anseleem Nhamo Sanyatwe, among others, have publicly dissociated themselves from Muchena’s statement.
Why the retired Generals’ epistle needs to be taken seriously
I have written elsewhere that save for the toxic and disgusting fart of a political harlot holed up in some hideout in Nairobi and the misguided utterances of a village head who routinely spews nonsensical gibberish beyond his village remit in the flotsam and jetsam of Boterekwa in Shurugwi, no other rational person has questioned Muchena’s memorandum, itself a poignant convergence of the aspirations of all the patriotic citizens of our land.
Muchena must be taken seriously not simply because of the sanity ingrained in the grave matters that he raises, but also because of the credentials of the constituency that he represents.
As Rtd Lt General Winston Sigauke Mapuranga said in his public excoriation of the excitable Mliswa, Muchena represents decorated stalwarts who commanded brigades, built institutions, buried colleagues in the struggle, held the country together and lived the moments of crisis that many could only afford to read about in the newspapers.
Muchena’s memo is not a lone shrill voice in the wilderness, as subsequent events have shown.
He represents a powerful constituency and his views have found resonance with the millions of ordinary Zimbabweans who find themselves disenfranchised once these treasonous amendments are adopted.
Even the serving command element through the Joint Operations Command (JOC) has tellingly maintained a loud silence in the aftermath of Muchena’s memo.
This could be because Muchena’s memo is in every sense akin in its significance to the late General Vitalis Zvinavashe’s “straitjacket” statement of January 2002 and Constantino Chiwenga’s “stockholder” epistle of Monday, 13 November 2017.
And yet again, Muchena also tellingly and boldly invoked the same stockholder credentials in what in every sense read like a drawing of the line in the sand.
For many neutrals, the Deep State—that ominous software on whose stance regimes are either sculpted or demised—-pronounced itself last Friday!
If Mnangagwa is serious about preserving the remaining remnants of his monumentally emaciated legacy, he must at least listen to this refreshingly sane voice from these men and women of hard power, who in any case foisted him on the hallowed pedestal in 2017.
If Moyo and Mliswa wanted the full list of the signatures on Muchena’s memo, then the separate buttressing missive issued by Retired Lt General Winston Sigauke Mapuranga must have put their misguided concerns to rest!
Rather than asking the retired generals to name themselves and to define their locus standi, it is in fact Mliswa himself who must answer the important questions raised yesterday by Muchena in his follow-up memo yesterday:
Is Mliswa Parliament’s spokesperson, to which institution the memo was written? Is he the government spokesperson or the ZANU PF spokesperson?
Of course, we know he has tingling coins in his pocket and represents a woeful lot purchased to sbet this monumental national affront.
Keeping their solemn promise
This is the second time in nine years that the military’s voice has found currency with ordinary Zimbabweans.
And in both instances it was against a power-drunk incumbent surrounded by a corrupt retinue feeding and benefitting from his ruinous reign while the rest of the nation suffered.
Let us be clear on one thing: when a regime appears hell-bent on mischievously tampering with a national Constitution, especially one that we affirmed in a referendum, then it ceases to be a partisan matter but a grievous national transgression that we must all collectively confront.
But then and most importantly: it is not enough for the retired military generals to say the right things as they did last week.
Beyond statements, what they practically do on the gound in the coming days and months to ensure the treasonous Bill dies a stillbirth is going to be more significant.
As ordinary Zimbabweans, we are going to hold them to their word in protecting the people and in making sure that this treasonous amendment does not see the light of the day.
And here, I am going to restate just three of the retired generals’ powerful commitments and bold declarations as culled from their own statement:
Commitment Number One:
“Democracy does not permit one party, however powerful, to reshape the country’s foundational law without the express consent of the people.”
Commitment Number Two:
“We did not fight for ZANU PF members alone, we fought for the people. We will not move an inch from this position.”
Commitment Number Three:
“Do the architects of these amendments wish to make liars of us? Do they wish us to stand at the graves of our fallen and admit that what we told them was false? That will not happen. Not while we still draw breath.”
Conclusion: None but ourselves
The Deep State has spoken and for once, it is on the side of the people.
Together, as a united and revolutionary citizenry, guided by our patriotism under a common flag, at home and abroad, in the cities and in the villages, in the cantonment areas and outside, let us all unite and put our shoulders on the wheel to defend the Constitution by stopping this treasonous Bill or at least subject it to a referendum.
None but ourselves will free us!
Luke Tamborinyoka, a citizen from Domboshava, is currently based in England.
