ZIMBABWEAN-born associate professor at the University of Oxford, Miles Tendi has poked holes into President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s biography and exposed the widening rift between the Zanu PF leader and his deputy, Constantino Chiwenga.
Early this month, former MDC-T policy adviser Eddie Cross
released a 153-page book — A Life of Sacrifice — which tells the life history
of Mnangagwa, from childhood to presidency.
But Tendi said the book sought to project Chiwenga in bad
light, depicting him as a hardliner determined to frustrate Mnangagwa’s reform
agenda. He said by signing copies of the book during its launch at State House,
Mnangagwa effectively endorsed its contents.
He said the book also glorified Zimbabwe Defence Forces
(ZDF) commander Valerio Phillip Sibanda, who took over from Chiwenga after the
November 2019 coup, describing him as “possibly the best soldier in southern
Africa and a man who was deeply respected in the army”.
Cross said Sibanda rejected a proposal by Chiwenga to put
the country under a state of emergency and apply martial law when citizens took
to the streets in protest against fuel price hikes in January 2019.
“Additionally, Cross maintains that when violence and
looting occurred in January 2019, the Acting Pesident Chiwenga ‘demanded that a
state of emergency be declared and martial law be introduced. This would have
effectively meant that the armed forces took over the administration of the
State.”
However, Cross continues: “General Sibanda refused. He said
his orders from the President were clear. What had happened was that the
President had stamped his personal authority on the State. He would not
tolerate any challenge.”
“His (Cross) biography suggests that Mnangagwa and Chiwenga
are ill at ease with each other. Cross typecasts Chiwenga as obstructing
political and economic reforms and as in favour of repressive and militarised
State responses such as martial law,” Tendi noted.
Cross described Chiwenga as a hardliner who resisted
Mnangagwa’s reforms on the electoral systems and relaxation of controls over
the media and civil society, saying it would have a serious impact on the
ability of Zanu PF to win the election.
“The biography depicts Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga,
the former general who helped bring Mnangagwa to power in a military coup in
2017, in an unfavourable light,” Tendi said.
Cross writes that following Mnangagwa’s inauguration as
President on November 24, 2017,“he set about selecting a new Cabinet and senior
staff in the President’s Office. This was complicated by the demands being made
by the senior military officers who had carried out what became known as the
military-assisted transition (military coup). Chief among these was the
commander of the armed forces, General Chiwenga”.
The Vice-President was one of the military generals who
staged a coup against the late former President Robert Mugabe.
“Moreover, Cross contends that a grenade thrown at
Mnangagwa on June 23, 2018 during a Zanu PF rally at White City Stadium in
Bulawayo ‘was of Chinese origin and in use by the Zimbabwe National Army’.
“Chiwenga was present at the White City rally and his wife
Marry sustained injuries from the blast but Cross, curiously, does not mention
this — of the two Vice-Presidents only Kembo Mohadi is identified as present at
the rally and as having sustained injuries along with 47 others.
“From the foregoing, Cross appears to be casting aspersions
on Chiwenga as a political operator.”
Also critiquing Cross’ book, exiled former Cabinet minister
and Zanu PF politburo member Jonathan Moyo sensationally claimed that
Mnangagwa’s biography exposed lies the President has been spreading on his life
experiences.
In both reviews, Moyo and Tendi revealed that Cross
deliberately omitted events and details that would portray Mnangagwa in bad
light, including the role he played in the Gukurahundi genocide in
Matabeleland, which raised questions on the factuality of the biography.
The two also exposed Mnangagwa’s lies when he claimed that
he was saved the hangman’s noose for bombing a train in 1965 because he was
under the age of 21, when records show that he was saved by the court which
ruled that he faced a less serious case.
“The fact that Mnangagwa’s 1965 court record went missing
from the National Archives a long ago, only to resurface in the Eddie Cross
book, has raised security eyebrows. Mnangagwa is hostile to books; he did not
know his 1965 record is in his biography, before its publication!” Moyo tweeted on Thursday.
However, both Mnangagwa and Chiwenga have publicly denied
allegations of bad blood between them. Newsday
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