It’s game on at Zanu PF meet

via It’s game on at Zanu PF meet – DailyNews Live Fungi Kwaramba, CHIEF WRITER • 10 December 2015

VICTORIA FALLS – Although many issues are up in the air at the post-congress Zanu PF’s fractious annual conference that is being held here this week, many ruling party bigwigs believe that the thorny question of who will ultimately succeed President Robert Mugabe is one of the few things that will be decided for sure.

Still, and with political temperatures at the get-together matching the typically hot weather in this part of the country at this time of the year, all are agreed that sparks are set to fly as rival factions butt heads furiously over who exactly will take over from the increasingly- frail nonagenarian when he leaves office.

Insiders say in one corner stands Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his supporters, and in the other, First Lady Grace Mugabe and Zanu PF’s ambitious Young Turks known as the Generation 40 — camps that have for months now been embroiled in a brutal fight for supremacy in the party.

Sources seen as close to the G40 claimed in briefings with the Daily News yesterday that it was now “game over for Team Lacoste (Mnangagwa camp), particularly  if the women’s quota systems is re-introduced in the party as is expected to happen, and as has been overwhelmingly proposed by party structures countrywide.

“It’s game over for Team Lacoste, whose members have been dreaming big and who have already set up structures around the country in preparation for their ascendancy to power. By Sunday, there will be gnashing of teeth in that entire camp,” one of the sources said.

The increasingly-important conference is being held on the backdrop of serious factional and succession fights in the party, arguably the worst since Zanu PF came to power in April 1980.

“The irony of it all is that although Victoria Falls is one of the world’s premier holiday resorts, many delegates at the conference won’t even get an opportunity to sample it and take in its amazing scenery.

“The conference is in many respects a winner takes-all and life and death affair, which means that there is no time to see the smoke that thunders, take boat cruises or go for game viewing,” a local businessman said, adding that the future of the party and Zimbabwe were at stake.

Mugabe himself is not expected here until tomorrow when he officially opens the conference running under the deceptive theme, Consolidating People’s Power Through Zim-Asset.