THE battle over who will succeed President Robert Mugabe is
reportedly turning bloody, with the late Masvingo Provincial Affairs minister
Shuvai Mahofa allegedly becoming the latest casualty from suspected food
poisoning at the party’s 2015 December conference held in Victoria Falls after
speaking out her mind on the sensitive topic.
Mahofa, who was 76 and a strong ally of embattled
Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa, was pronounced dead on arrival at Makurira
Hospital on Monday after collapsing at her home around 3:30am.
Zanu PF chief whip Lovemore Matuke claimed she had
succumbed to the 2015 “food poisoning” incident.
“Since 2015, when she left the Victoria Falls conference
because of ill health due to reported poisoning, she had been battling a lot of
ailments,” he said.
There are two rival factions in Zanu PF — one angling for
Mnangagwa, who is also suspected to have been poisoned last week at a rally in
Gwanda, to take over — while another, with the backing of First Lady Grace
Mugabe, is reportedly pushing for Defence minister Sydney Sekeramayi to take
over.
The two factions have been fiercely jockeying for the top
job and brawling in the media, although it seems the wars have gone out of
hand.
Mahofa’s daughter, Fungai, said the Gutu Senator and
politburo member did not fully recover since the 2015 “poisoning” incident.
“We are saddened by her death because she had recovered
very well from the 2015 incident,” Fungai told NewsDay Weekender on Wednesday
at the family’s Rhodene residence in Masvingo at the funeral wake.
Prior to the alleged food poisoning incident ahead of the
2015 conference, Mahofa, nicknamed “Chikoforo” (cultivator) and “Iron Lady of
Masvingo”, had openly indicated that she was against Grace taking over from her
husband.
Speaking at the inter-district meeting held at Masvingo
Teachers’ College in November 2015, just a month before the conference where
she was allegedly poisoned, Mahofa said as a province, they were rallying
behind Mugabe and warned those pushing for his wife to take over to remember Grace
was just the women’s league boss.
“There are some in the party who want to tarnish the image
of the First Lady and trying to destroy Zanu PF in the Press by linking her to
some posts. We chose the First Lady as leader of the women’s league,” she said.
“We have one centre of power in Zanu PF, namely Baba
VaMugabe, yet others say they want to replace him with someone. Makambozvionepi
izvozvo? (Where have you seen that happen?) To those who are doing it, I say:
‘Stop it’!” Mahofa said then, much to the applause of the delegates.
She was to spend months hospitalised in South Africa and
returned to work frail.
Mahofa is not the only one who has reportedly been a victim
of the party’s factional wars.
The late Midlands provincial heroine, Espinah Nhari, died
in 2016 in a head-on collision, with her family claiming that the suspended
Zanu PF women’s boss was assassinated for her anti-G40 faction chant at a
campaign rally addressed by Grace in Gutu in 2015.
Addressing mourners in Kwekwe before her burial at the
Midlands Provincial Heroes’ Acre in Gweru, Nhari’s son, Rodgers, said prior to
her death, she received death threats from anonymous callers.
He said the callers felt offended by the women’s league’s
secretary for administration’s “Down with G40” chant at the rally, adding the
horrific accident, which claimed her life, was engineered by her detractors in
the ruling party.
“My mother is dead because of [the] Gutu [rally]. But what
happened at that rally, she did not attack anyone, but only spoke out against
people who were sending her threatening chats. But she became the victim
instead,” Rodgers said.
He said he knew some Zanu PF officials who allegedly
hounded his mother until her death in the head-on collision just outside
Kadoma.
“I know some of you are here and you are happy. That’s not
a problem, but we will win this battle. I have threatening messages, over 20 of
them, which were sent to my mother,” Rodgers continued.
He told mourners that his mother had been approached and
pressured to ask for forgiveness over her chant, but she refused.
“A lot of people asked my mother to ask for forgiveness,
but she was principled and refused to sell her soul to the devil. Likewise, I
will not sell my soul to the devil,” he said.
Nhari, a close Mnangagwa ally, was suspended from her
women’s league post shortly after her “Down with G40” chant and was one of the
36 party members set to have their suspensions reviewed by Zanu PF’s
disciplinary tribunal, headed by Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko. newsday
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