Moyo will soon come to grief, vows Charamba

via Moyo will soon come to grief, vows Charamba – NewZimbabwe 28/01/2016

PRESIDENTIAL spokesman George Charamba removed the gloves Thursday and gave higher education minister Jonathan Moyo a bare knuckle battering as the succession rows in government and the ruling Zanu PF party escalate.

And Moyo, fighting back from his Twitter corner, responded very much in kind.

“I am speaking as the spokesperson of the President,” Charamba, who is also permanent secretary for the information ministry, declared in an interview with the privately-owned ZiFM Stereo radio station.

“These (Moyo and allies) are people who think by sheer proximity, they can build messages around the First Family. They are fools, get it from me, they are big fools and I hope someday they will come back to their senses.

“It tells you big book minus social skills comes to grief. Getting learned and getting educated are different things. What I am seeing here is a projection of high learning and poor social skills,” Charamba said without mentioning Moyo.

But the higher education minister was not in doubt he was the target of the attack.

Said Moyo on Twitter: “George Charamba must not abuse his civil servant role as Info Perm Sec to serve successionists. That will be resisted as it was in 2014!

“George Charamba’s media voices are no longer of a civil servant but of a politician in aid of a desperate faction. That’s unacceptable!”

He continued: “There’s a silly Shakespearean wordsmith who thinks politics is about clever words & who sees himself as the system when he’s a factionalist!”

And as if aware his adversary was tweeting, Charamba went on: “One tragedy of those little fellas, and I call them little fellas, they confuse media skills with social skills.

“They think you can scale up a political ladder by tweeting, who think when you manipulate one or two headlines, you have a social base for launching your stupid ambitions, they will come to grief, get it from me.”

Charamba suggested that Moyo and his allies were trying to reconstitute the Zanu PF presidium by replacing vice president Emmerson Mnagwagwa with First Lady Grace Mugabe having concluded the president would not make it to the next elections in 2018.

Moyo playing God

“Here are these ‘God’s deputies’ who know when Mugabe will die, who can tell who should not be Vice President and who should be? Who can tell who must succeed Mugabe when they have killed him off?

“And meanwhile, we must accept that they are not ambitious themselves, they don’t want to be Vice Presidents themselves, but they know who must not be. They don’t want to be President themselves, but they know who must not succeed and when that does not succeed, who does?’

For as yet unclear reasons, Moyo has regularly attacked Mnangagwa, scorning the vice president’s prospects of taking over from President Robert Mugabe who turns 92 next month.

The higher education minister reportedly fronts a so-called G40 faction in the ruling party which pretends to back First Lady Grace Mugabe and is reportedly behind the slogan ‘munhu wese kunaAmai’.

Asked Charamba: “How does the First Lady talk about succession of her husband, does it make sense to you?”

“These are people who think by sheer proximity, they can build messages around the First Family.

Mugabe gives long rope

He then warned: “This is the First Family, they will allow you a very long rope, but there is a limit.

“You can’t keep stretching the rope, at some point, the knot will tighten. I know what must stop, it is this tomfoolery.”

Charamba also accused Moyo and his allies of leaking politburo deliberations to media.

“They sit there with some little newsmen, compose headlines, repeat arguments that they were saying when they were working with me and they think they are being discreet,” he charged.

“They think we don’t see that. The tragedy is to try and be clever than the people. To think that you are the brightest brain around, that’s tragic.

“They sit in the Politburo and I sit there as an official and I know what goes on there. Then following day, not only have they leaked the stuff, but they do so in their poor English, which I know and I am supposed to sit there like a Happy Buddha and keep my mouth mum when they are discussing the fate of the President, my boss, botching the subject of succession on whose behalf?

“How do you advance a Zanu PF agenda by speaking about its own termination?”