Source: Mugabe lavishes Grace with praise – DailyNews Live
Tendai Kamhungira 22 February 2017
HARARE – Speaking to the ZBC in his ritual birthday interview last Friday,
as powerful First Lady Grace Mugabe was roasting Zanu PF bigwigs in Buhera
for dreaming about succeeding her husband, President Robert Mugabe
banished for good the whispers within sections of the warring former
liberation movement that she sometimes operates without his blessing.
Mugabe not only lavished praises on Grace, he also backed her to succeed
and to hold her own in the deeply-divided ruling party – making it clear
in the process that he has been mentoring and guiding her all along, as
Zanu PF’s deadly tribal, factional and succession wars have become more
intractable.
“She is very acceptable, very much accepted by the people. I thought you
saw her on television today (on Friday in Buhera North). It’s fireworks,
isn’t it?” he said with a glint of mischief.
“She is well-seasoned now. She is a very strong character. I saw something
quite different in her. They (critics) thought she was an ambitious woman
who would want to work herself into a position of power,” Mugabe added
with much pride and satisfaction.
The previously publicity-shy Grace entered mainstream politics with a bang
in 2014, when she landed Zanu PF’s influential post of secretary for the
women’s league, in the run-up to the ruling party’s sham congress that
year, which saw former long-serving Vice President Joice Mujuru and other
senior officials – including former secretary for administration Didymus
Mutasa and party spokesperson Rugare Gumbo – being expelled from the
former liberation movement.
Mugabe also moved to defend his decision to allow the First Lady to enter
politics in his interview with the State broadcaster, drawing parallels
with the role that his late first wife Sally – who also led the women’s
league – had played.
“But I had my first wife Sally … she organised the women. We did not
have the women’s league here. The Ghana style, the (Kwame) Nkrumah style
of the women’s league which gained acceptance in our region was introduced
by my wife and others in Zimbabwe, my late wife (Sally) I mean.
“But in fact people were saying aah, the leaders must not disallow their
wives from participating in politics. We want their wives to lead us. But
what you get nowadays from some quotas is that the leader’s wife should
not participate in politics. Why not? Why not?” the nonagenarian asked.
And as the ZBC interview was being recorded, Grace was on the same day
laying into ambitious Zanu PF bigwigs, as well as all those calling on her
husband to retire at her rally in Buhera.
“As Zanu PF, we have an upper hand, but sometimes we want to throw away
the gifts that we are given by God. That man (Mugabe) is irreplaceable.
Whether you like it or not, what is in him comes from God.
“We have a problem when our leader is insulted. Hatisi kuzodyiwa
takatarisa samatemba (we won’t be abused while we are watching
helplessly).
“We may be quiet but we are watching. The media is being given money to
write stories and sometimes they would have been threatened . . . they are
being fed,” Grace said.
“I cannot be told by someone whom he (Mugabe) began with in 1980 that he
is old. That is unfair. If you want him to go motobva mese totora over
isusu (leave and we will take over).
“You will hear people saying you want Mugabe to continue so that you will
remain as the first lady. It’s unfair. Don’t expect me to tell him to
retire when there are millions who voted for him.
“There can be miracles. If God decides that Mugabe should go and we put
pictures of his corpse on the ballot paper, people will still vote for him
and he will win the election,” she told the gathered Zanu PF supporters.
In May last year, Grace also stunned thousands of Zanu PF supporters who
had gathered in Harare for a solidarity rally with her husband when she
said Mugabe would rule Zimbabwe from the grave.
“We want you to lead this country from your grave, while you lie at the
National Heroes Acre,” she said.
And speaking during a rally at Murehwa Business Centre in 2015, the
influential first lady also warned Zanu PF heavyweights that she was going
to design a special wheelchair from which Mugabe would rule until he was
100 years old.
“We are going to create a special wheelchair for President Mugabe until he
rules to 100 years because that is what we want. That is the people’s
choice. We want a leader that respects us,” she said.
The Zanu PF youth league has also since formally moved a motion, at the
ruling party’s annual conference which was held in Masvingo last December,
for Mugabe to be declared life president.
During his Friday interview, Mugabe also bluntly dismissed his colleagues
in the party as not being worthy and acceptable candidates to take over
from him.
He said he would soldier on in power – notwithstanding his advanced age
and declining health – and would only step down if Zanu PF asked him to do
so.
“The call to step down must come from my party, my party at congress, my
party at central committee … I will step down.
“But then what do you see? It’s the opposite. They want me to stand for
elections. They want me to stand for elections everywhere in the party.
“Of course, if I feel that I can’t do it anymore, I will say so to my
party so that they relieve me. But for now I think I can’t say so … The
majority of the people feel that there is no replacement, a successor who
to them is acceptable, as acceptable as I am,” Mugabe said.
“But the people, you know, would want to judge everyone else on the basis
of President Mugabe as the criteria.
“But I have been at it for a longer period than anyone else and leaders
will have to be, as it were, given time to develop and to have the ability
to meet with the people and to be judged by the people.
“Silently, in the majority of cases, the people must see and be convinced
that yes, so and so can be the successor. Others think, yaa, yaa, that
they are this in the party, they are capable of succeeding the president.
It’s not that easy,” he added as he rubbished his ambitious lieutenants.
His statement was seen as slamming the door shut in the face of his
longtime aide Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who until recently had
been touted as a front-runner to succeed the nonagenarian.
Stung by this damning statement, Mnangagwa’s angry allies have come out
guns blazing, warning the increasingly frail nonagenarian that he faced a
big fight if he continued to thwart the Midlands godfather’s mooted
presidential aspirations.
Mnangagwa’s supporters also said on Monday that they would now openly
campaign for him as Mugabe’s successor, raising the stakes high in the
succession saga.
Zanu PF is deeply-divided over Mugabe’s succession, with a faction of
young party Turks going by the moniker Generation 40 (G40) rabidly opposed
to Mnangagwa succeeding Mugabe, and squaring up against the VP’s allies,
Team Lacoste.
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