SELF-EXILED former minister Saviour Kasukuwere has accused the ruling Zanu PF party of failing to abide by its constitution in elevating President Emmerson Mnangagwa as its leader following the ousting of the late former leader Robert Mugabe.
Speaking at a discussion on the fifth anniversary of
Mugabe’s ouster held under the topic, Back to the Future: A Review of the
Post-November 2017 Coup in Zimbabwe which was hosted by Sapes Trust last
Thursday, Kasukuwere accused Mnangagwa of inheriting Mugabe’s traits of
consolidating power around himself.
He also claimed that Mnangagwa was Mugabe’s preferred
successor but was pressured by power-hungry allies to stage a coup in November
2017.
“Those colleagues were looking at the watch and wanted to
taste power. Their ages were advancing and some were turning 79, others 80. If
we had discussed this at the party we would not have been where we are now,”
Kasukuwere said.
“The appointment of Mnangagwa as then Vice-President was an
indication that Mugabe wanted him to come in. This was a discussion he had with
us to say: ‘Let Mnangagwa come in and we can move forward.’ But Zanu PF being
Zanu PF there was a secretive way of doing things which created problems for us
up to this day.”
Mugabe, who had ruled Zimbabwe since 1980 and overseen its
descent into economic ruin, watched as a bitter rivalry developed between his
wife Grace and Mnangagwa which precipitated his ousting by military chiefs.
Grace had hoped to take over as president and had the
backing of a Zanu PF faction known as G40 while the army was backing Mnangagwa.
Kasukuwere said Mnangagwa had succumbed to pressure from
power-hungry allies, adding that Mugabe had sensed his growing “disloyalty,”
and fired him as vice-president and purged him from the party on November 6,
2017.
The dismissal enraged Mnangagwa, who had served the
liberation movement since his youth and for which he was nearly executed after
he was caught bombing a train as a young militant.
“When Mugabe developed doubts about Mnangagwa's loyalty,
that is when Mnangagwa failed to control his faction members. That led to the
unconstitutional events of removal of President Mugabe,” Kasukuwere told
NewsDay yesterday.
At the discussion, he said: “We should have stuck to the
constitutional process to challenge the President. The big problem in Zanu PF
now is that nobody can stand up and say ‘I want to be a Zanu PF president.’ You
can say that in exile, not in Zimbabwe. We should have stuck to the
constitutional process to challenge the President.”
Mugabe was regarded as one of the great survivors of
international politics, but Kasukuwere admits that he overstayed while
insisting that deep-rooted factionalism in the party forced the aging leader to
defer his plan to step down early.
“After the 2002 elections and thereafter, Mugabe intended
to step down, but factors took place that meant he remained in office until
2008 when we had that humiliation with the MDC and he stayed up to 2013 when he
won. We thought after winning the election in 2013 he would put in place
processes for a much more stable succession programme.
“In 2017, he told me as his political commissar that he was
stepping down. We were in Mexico attending a conference and we talked for about
seven hours. Still, it was too late because of the dynamics of the politics at
that time,” Kasukuwere said.
Kasukuwere is conspicuously absent as two of his G40
colleagues, Jonathan Moyo and Patrick Zhuwao try to manouvre their way back
into the ruling party.
Last week, the two former ministers made a public apology
for being involved in the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) party
politics.
Speaking at the same dialogue, CCC vice-president Tendai
Biti said there was need for Zimbabweans to converge for a democratic
breakthrough from “Zanu PF capture.”
“I want to agree with those who say we need a new
consensus, we need a new social contract, we need new levers of interaction and
intervention. (Zimbabwe is) a broken society,” Biti said.
“It’s a broken country. We have been mutilated. We have
been vandalised by autocracy, by a political system, by a political party built
on the culture of entitlement, built on the culture of impunity, built on the
messianic complex, no one can rule except Zanu PF.” Newsday
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