Grace Mugabe to decide Didymus Mutasa’s fate

via Grace Mugabe to decide Didymus Mutasa’s fate – NewsDay January 29, 2015

FIRST Lady Grace Mugabe will preside over the disciplinary hearing for disgraced former party secretary for administration Didymus Mutasa.

This follows the decision of the highly-anticipated Zanu PF politburo meeting which was chaired by President Robert Mugabe in Harare yesterday.

Party spokesperson Simon Khaya Moyo told journalists that Mugabe had appointed his wife to sit on the Zanu PF disciplinary panel tasked with Mutasa’s case.

He defended Grace’s inclusion, saying it was the norm that the secretaries for the women and youth leagues should be part of the disciplinary committee.

Other members of the panel are Zanu PF national commissar Saviour Kasukuwere, secretary for legal affairs Patrick Chinamasa, secretary for security Kembo Mohadi and Pupurai Togarepi.

Mutasa has threatened to seek legal nullification of the ruling party’s December elective congress resolutions.

The committee, to be chaired by Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko, was announced following a politburo meeting which Mugabe briefly chaired before flying out of the country to attend the African Union (AU) Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Mugabe is expected to assume the AU chairmanship for the next 12 months.

Khaya Moyo said the committee was expected to meet soon and conduct Mutasa’s hearing.

Grace is currently recuperating in the Far East after undergoing a medical operation.

“The issue of our former secretary for administration Cde Didymus Mutasa was also raised and has been referred for consideration or deliberation to the new national disciplinary committee,” Khaya Moyo said.

“They (committee members) have been entrusted to deliberate on the issue of Cde Didymus Mutasa in reference to utterances and remarks he has made about congress and the party.”

Mutasa lost his Zanu PF central committee post in Makoni and was subsequently relieved of his all-powerful secretary for administration portfolio after he was linked to a team of “party rebels” led by ousted former Vice-President Joice Mujuru.

The Headlands MP was also fired from the Cabinet as Presidential Affairs minister alongside 14 other ministers and their deputies on allegations of conspiring to clandestinely topple Mugabe from the helm of Zanu PF and government.

The Mujuru camp was booted out of party structures at the congress last December.

But Mutasa has been fighting for the nullification of the congress resolutions claiming it was held unconstitutionally.

He recently appealed for Sadc and AU’s intervention both of which are now chaired by Mugabe. Mutasa threatened to take the legal route, where he was expected to file his papers in Harare yesterday.