Tourism and Hospitality Industry minister Walter Mzembi on
Friday said there is a sinister plot in Zanu PF to undermine President Robert
Mugabe through factionalism, singling out Midlands and Masvingo as problem
areas.
Mzembi told a Masvingo South constituency management
committee at Renco Mine that senior Zanu PF leaders were now using coded
language to attack Mugabe and his wife, Grace.
“We now need special gifts to discern factional messages
and coded signals passing for poetry and innuendos now undermining leadership,”
he said.
“People at the top are now speaking in idioms. Be careful
and do not accept every word from the leadership unless the message is from the
president.”
Mzembi added: “Then there are some among us cloning the
president. They claim to speak on his behalf.
“President vati, hee ndabva kuna president [the president
said . . . I am coming from the president]. I thought he had his own mouth,
quite a reputable one to articulate for himself, so why would anyone seek to
speak for him in vain?”
He warned leaders in the ruling party against sowing seeds
of division among supporters
“Masvingo Province cannot take a Bantustan trajectory and
raise Bantu Holamisas of this world,” Mzembi said.
“Instead, we should aim to mentor national leaders and
statesmen who can contribute to the development of the country.
“It should be our collective responsibility to bring the
best out of the people of Masvingo and no one should be made to feel like a
nobody.
“The recent culture of political cursing seemingly being
imported into the province should not be tolerated. It’s a dangerous culture.
“I am particularly worried about the patronising
relationship of the Midlands province on Masvingo, one pregnant with tribal and
regional connotations.
“Going into the future, we can’t sustain a relationship
built on faulty foundations.”
He added: “We cannot afford to foment ethnic valences that
conversely unite others against us in the two provinces, nor communicate a message
of senior brotherhood over Masvingo.
“People should not be fed with hate or superiority complex
narratives, if it is happening elsewhere we don’t want it here for whatever
reason.
“If you were on this path already, seek to be born again
ideologically and reaffirm your loyalties to centre politics and the president.
Masvingo Zanu PF, be born again.”
Without mentioning his name, Mzembi took a swipe at
Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa for comments he made at the memorial service
for the late Masvingo Provincial Affairs minister, Shuvai Mahofa in Gutu
recently.
“To hear a national leader recite poetry that is pregnant
with riddles in the song kumagumo kune nyaya [the end spell trouble] at this
stage, with all the attendant sensitivities in our political midst is to put a
foot in one’s mouth,” he said.
“Armageddon language such as kumagumo kune nyaya is only
found in Revelations in itself a chapter captured in prophetic and cryptic
cataclysmic language about the end of the world.
“It can only invoke fear about an end game that them only
have designed for others.”
He said “big brother politics” was not useful in Masvingo.
“Coming into the province to reinforce narratives like
‘nhire’ [stubbornness] among what the Midlanders think are their faithful, especially
at a memorial service when the same term has been used recently to abuse some
of us at a funeral service of the same heroine leaves us with no doubt as to
the source of this hate speech,” Mzembi added.
“It leaves us no longer guessing about its chilling
execution in the fullness of time! This cannot earn anybody support.”
Mzembi was harassed at Mahofa’s funeral at her Rhodene home
in Masvingo after he was accused by Team Lacoste members of being a blue-eyed
boy of the first family.
On allegations of being a G40 member, Mzembi had this to
say: “I have no problem with being called a G40. Even though I am well past 40,
but these labels should be about “G. ideas”, “G. vision” or “G. purpose”, not
just numbers but a debate of superiority of ideas that change people’s lives
for the better.”
The minister, who has also been labelled a “sell out” in
Masvingo, which is predominantly pro-Lacoste, said he would continue informing
Mugabe about what was happening in the province.
“It is an eternal covenant I made and I am not a sell out,
but I submit to the one above me and I am playing my role of being an advisor,”
he said.
“I will continue advising him and why should anyone cry
foul about my mandate and its attendant oaths of loyalty and allegiance?
“I have been doing it for 10 years. There are others who
have served for 37 years and they should know better and stop interpreting that
advisory role that we play as ministers.
“The president relies on us and brokering meetings between
him and those constituencies we come from does not in any way amount to selling
out.” Standard
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