‘Kick out Mugabe’

Source: ‘Kick out Mugabe’ – DailyNews Live January 11, 2017

Tendai Kamhungira

HARARE – In a call that is set to send temperatures soaring higher within
the warring Zanu PF, vocal supporter of Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa,
Energy Mutodi, has called on the ruling party to hold an extra-ordinary
congress to install President Robert Mugabe’s successor.

Speaking to the Daily News yesterday, as Zanu PF’s deadly tribal,
factional and succession wars burn hotter, the musician and
businessman-turned-politician also reiterated his public view that it was
time that Mnangagwa took over from Mugabe, whom he described as old and
“ailing”.

Mutodi also claimed that Mugabe, who turns 93 next month, had become so
unpopular in Zanu PF that “99 percent” of the party’s members now wanted
him to resign before the eagerly-anticipated 2018 national elections, as
there was allegedly no way that the nonagenarian could win elections
against popular opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

The highly-opinionated Mutodi sentiments come after another vociferous
Mnangagwa supporter, former Cabinet minister and war veterans leader
Christopher Mutsvangwa, was also emphatic in a recent interview with a UK
publication, the New Statesman, that the VP would “100 percent” soon be
Zimbabwe’s next president.

In addition, Mutodi said yesterday, anybody who believed that Mnangagwa
was “unelectable”, as many of the Midlands godfather’s Zanu PF enemies
were fond of saying, was “lost”.

Further, Mutodi said, he fully supported ongoing calls by war veterans for
Mugabe to retire, adding that Mnangagwa was “not to blame” for the
Gukurahundi massacres of the early 1980s in which an estimated 20 000
innocent civilians were killed mainly in Matabeleland and the Midlands.

“Mugabe must retire. What we must be discussing now is how we share power
in Zanu PF post-Mugabe,” he said, adding that it will be very embarrassing
for Mugabe if he stood for election again and lost.

“Mnangagwa is too loyal to Mugabe, to the extent that he cannot even
express his own views for his boss to retire. It’s up to Mugabe himself to
be really thankful to his loyalists who have helped him to remain in power
for this long and not the opportunists who praise him during the day and
denigrate him during the night.

“This is what the man (Mnangagwa) is made of and he has shown total
loyalty and obedience to the president,” Mutodi told the Daily News.

He was also emphatic that he was “even prepared to die” for his views and
personal beliefs, adding that the ongoing demand by the Zanu PF women’s
league to push a woman back into the presidency, possibly at Mnangagwa’s
expense, would come to nought as this would only be entertained in 2019
when the party holds its next elective congress.

“The extra-ordinary congress that we may want to do now is for the 2018
presidential candidate, because we feel our long serving president is now
old.

“I don’t think that one deserves to be a VP simply because one is a woman.
You must be deserving not because of your sex. We are not going to be
entertaining that resolution,” Mutodi said.

He said all conferences until 2019 were not elective, which would make it
difficult for the women to see their demand coming to fruition anytime
soon.

“Those people raising the issue of the quota system, the likes of (Mandi)
Chimene and (Sarah) Mahoka are drug abusers,” he also claimed.

Mutodi torched a similar storm just over a week ago after he appeared in
pictures with Mnangagwa who was holding a cup inscribed with the words “I
am the boss”, in a saga that has since been dubbed “Cupgate”.

Following the release of the pictures, Mnangagwa’s foes went to town about
the issue, interpreting it as the VP’s open statement that he had
presidential ambitions.

There were also questions surrounding Mutodi’s presence at the party,
which was held by the VP at his rural home, but the businessman said he
just found himself at the event, though he did not receive any written
invitation like other officials who attended the gathering.

Higher and Tertiary Education minister Jonathan Moyo, who is believed to
be a key member of the Generation 40 (G40) faction, which rabidly opposes
Mnangagwa, immediately went to town about the “Cupgate” issue.

But Mutodi dismissed the Tsholotsho North MP’s criticism as aimed at
causing divisions in the ruling party.

“He is keen to see a war between Mnangagwa and Mugabe. I have always
reminded him that there is nowhere he can go with factionalism.

“He has been said to have claimed that he wanted to destroy Zanu PF from
within and any normal person will tell you that he is perhaps doing that
now, starting with the expulsion of (former Vice President Joice) Mujuru
and other senior party members, among them 16 or so ministers.

“That was not a joke and that issue could have been solved within the
party amicably and people should not have been expelled in such large
numbers.

“He is in the habit of divisive politics and right now President Mugabe
has been alienated from the people who liberated the country, the war
veterans,” Mutodi said.

“He (Moyo) is the Judas of Zanu PF.  He doesn’t want the party to succeed
because he has got grievances against the party that date back to the
1980s.

“He is not happy that the party continues to win elections. He has been in
and out of the party and for the president to trust that individual is the
biggest blunder he (Mugabe) has ever done,” he added.