FORMER President Robert Mugabe was forewarned about the
coup that would topple him from power, but distrusted those who warned him and
believed his then deputy Emmerson Mnangagwa and former Defence Forces commander
Constantino Chiwenga would never betray him, a former Cabinet minister has
said.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Big Saturday Read
published at the weekend by Alex Magaisa, former Higher Education minister
Jonathan Moyo said Mugabe considers what his two former lieutenants did a
“great betrayal” and “the utmost treachery”.
“… although he got various reports from different sources
about the planning of the coup, President Mugabe did not believe those reports
because he trusted Mnangagwa and Chiwenga more than he trusted those who gave
him the reports,” he said of the November 2017 coup that toppled Mugabe.
“It is my considered judgment that President Mugabe
genuinely and truly believed that Mnangagwa and Chiwenga would never
countenance toppling him from power.”
Moyo said he would give a detailed account of the events in
the two books he was writing why Mugabe did not believe Chiwenga and Mnangagwa
would be associated with the military action to topple him from power.
Moyo said if Mugabe had heeded the warnings, the November
2017 coup would have been stopped, adding that the coup plotters took a risk
and were even surprised that it had paid off.
He said Mugabe did not believe his ouster from power would
go ahead after his engagement with Chiwenga, who seemed more concerned about
his security of tenure and Zanu PF succession, which he wanted settled at the
December 2017 special congress.
“In fact, Chiwenga wanted President Mugabe to remain in
office to serve out his term, but to hand over leadership of the party at a
special Zanu PF congress.”
Moyo, who was forced to flee from his house and seek
shelter at Mugabe’s “Blue Roof” mansion, said if the soldiers had found him at
home in the wee hours of November 15, 2017, they would have killed him.
“There was no question of arresting me. Chiwenga’s soldiers
were on a mission to kill me,” he said.
He said while he could not use the information he had to
pre-empt the coup, he used it to whisk his family to safety because his house
“had been earmarked as a death trap for me with unknown risks to my family”, in
light of how it was intruded by soldiers.
He said while specific actions by the army — many of which
were ad hoc or spontaneous and unknown — plans of the coup itself were known.
Moyo said when he spoke about the coup plot in the
politburo in July 2017, during which he presented a video on the plot,
Mnangagwa threatened to kill him.
He said he would detail the fatalities recorded during the
course of the coup in his forthcoming books.
“What I can say for now is that President Mugabe was told
of fatalities by security organs the day he officiated his last State
university graduation ceremony as Chancellor at Zimbabwe Open University during
the coup on November 17, 2018. Otherwise, yes, there were fatalities and the
truth will soon or later come out as it always does,” he said.
On the June 30 elections that sought to sanitise Mnangagwa’s
presidency, Moyo said all the three conflicting results declared by the
Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and endorsed by the Constitutional Court showed
that half of the electorate did not support Mnangagwa.
“This point should be emphasised. Mnangagwa does not have
the majority support of the electorate and that is why he has a legitimacy
crisis. He is a divisive leader with divided support, in power only because of
the military that installed him in the first place,” he said.
“The July 30 elections bestowed on Mnangagwa only a veneer
of legality, not in terms of the rule of law, but in terms of rule by law. The
legal rules that were used to organise and run the July 30 elections were
superintended by a coup government that came into power via the gun.”
Moyo said Mnangagwa and Chiwenga were baying for his blood
and had been pursuing him “under false Zimdef [Zimbabwe Manpower Development
Fund] allegations”.
Turning to former First Lady Grace Mugabe, Moyo dismissed
claims he was behind her campaign against Mnangagwa.
“But the presumption that anyone, especially a person like
me, could become the brains behind Mrs Mugabe is preposterous … Becoming the
brains behind Mrs Mugabe would have meant coming between the President and his
spouse. That would have been reckless and suicidal,” he said.
“The proposition that the coup was done to stop Mrs Mugabe
from succeeding her husband is uncivilised and undemocratic. But on whether I
understood people’s concerns that Mrs Mugabe could have ended up on the wheel,
the answer is yes, of course, I did. How could I not? I, however, think that
people should have been equally concerned about Mnangagwa ending up on the
wheel.”
Moyo also said the United Kingdom and China supported the
coup that swept Mnangagwa to power, and described former British ambassador
Catriona Laing as “a coup busybody”.
“I would not be surprised to learn that her CV now lists
‘toppling Mugabe, who appeared invincible’, as her most outstanding diplomatic
feat in her career,” Moyo said. Newsday
0 comments:
Post a Comment