VICE-President Emmerson Mnangagwa allegedly told Higher
Education minister Jonathan Moyo during a heated Zanu PF politburo meeting that
they used to kill trouble makers like him during the war, it has emerged.
Mnangagwa allegedly made the chilling warning soon after
Moyo presented alleged video evidence that the VP was plotting to topple
President Robert Mugabe.
The minister last month stunned the Zanu PF politburo when
he accused the veteran politician of capturing state institutions and working
with ruling party renegades in the alleged plot to oust the president.
According to a letter Moyo wrote to Zanu PF secretary for
administration Ignatius Chombo, the Tsholotsho North MP said he interpreted
Mnangagwa’s statement to mean he was threatening him with murder.
“After my presentation, Cde Mnangagwa made a shocking
statement to the effect that while he was in Mozambique, during the liberation
struggle, people who made interventions such as my presentation to the
politburo on 19 July would have ‘their head separated from their shoulders’,”
Moyo wrote in the letter dated August 9.
“The full import of Cde Mnangagwa’s statement did not visit
me until after the politburo meeting, especially when other politburo members
asked me about it.
“Separating a head from a person’s shoulders is tantamount
to murder.
“The effect of Cde Mnangagwa’s statement was to threaten me
with murder and I wish to place this on record and request your office to take
the matter under review and to do the needful about it given the serious
implications of the unlawful threat.”
Moyo was responding to another letter by Chombo on July 24
where he was informed of Mnangagwa’s request for materials used in the
onslaught against him during the politburo meeting of July 19.
The material included the video detailing the VP’s alleged
document, a document titled Blue Ocean, which was linked to war veterans that
demanded that Mugabe must hand power to his deputy and a copy of Britain’s New
Statesmen magazine that carried an interview with Mnangagwa.
Moyo described Mnangagwa’s alleged statements as “badly
unacceptable” and wanted them to be placed on record.
In the letter to Chombo, he also demanded a dossier that
Mnangagwa allegedly waved at the politburo meeting, saying it proved the
minister was an agent of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Moyo claimed that although Mnangagwa had all the time to
present his dossier, he only brandished it in the politburo claiming it linked
him to the CIA.
“Cde Mnangagwa waved a document following my presentation
and claimed it was a dossier he and others he did not name had prepared in
anticipation of my presentation to ‘show that I am a CIA agent’,” the letter
added.
“Although he had brought the document to the politburo, he
did not have the courage to present it on the day or to share it with me and
yet he made gratuitous insults supposedly based on the document that I and
others associated with me are ‘CIA spies’.
“In the circumstance and particularly in view of the fact
that Cde Mnangagwa waved, in the politburo, the document which he said was a
dossier on me, I request that I be favoured with a copy of that document ahead
of the politburo meeting to enable me to make proper and full response to the
allegations in the document.”
Mnangagwa is expected to present his defence in the next
politburo meeting.
The two have been at each other’s throats for some time
now, with Moyo accusing Mnangagwa of leading a faction that is angling for
Mugabe’s position.
The VP has on numerous ocassions been forced to publicly
deny allegations that he harbours presidential ambitions and has become
impatient to move to State House. Standard
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