via Mugabe wants to create family dynasty – Mujuru – NewsDay Zimbabwe March 4, 2016
ZIMBABWE People First leader Joice Mujuru has said she is convinced President Robert Mugabe wants to hand over power to First Lady Grace Mugabe who will in turn surrender it to one their children, thereby creating a family dynasty.
BY Everson Mushava
In an interview with a foreign news agency based in Harare on Wednesday, Mujuru – a former Mugabe ally who deputised the 92-year-old leader for 10 years before she was fired from Zanu PF early last year on allegations of plotting against her boss – said Mugabe was on course to destroy the Zanu PF “revolutionary” legacy.
“I am sure it is about handing the power from father to wife, from daughter to son, maybe that’s what they want to make it, a dynasty,” Mujuru said.
Grace has, however, denied habouring presidential ambitions and the Zanu PF women’s league boss is reportedly linked to a Zanu PF faction, G40, which is battling with a rival one linked to Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa in the race to succeed Mugabe.
“I really don’t know where the family or the President and his wife want to take this country to,” Mujuru said.
“But the end result is they are actually destroying Zanu PF, they are destroying the revolution because if this thing is not halted, nothing is going to be left of the struggle.”
Mujuru said Mugabe no longer listened to anyone except his young and “ambitious” wife, claiming she tried in vain to have an audience with the veteran leader after Grace spearheaded a smear campaign against her person, accusing her of corruption and practicing witchcraft.
“Even when you try and seek for audience to try and reason with him (Mugabe), he does not give you. During the time that I was with him, I asked for that, which never came, that’s why I left,” she said.
“I am sure it is the young wife because when Mama Sally (Mugabe’s late first wife) was still alive things would be different. Once this one (Grace) came and before she was involved in politics, I thought she was someone else who was accommodative, who was the mother of the nation, but only to find she was something else,” sha said.
Mujuru said the way Mugabe savaged war veterans recently showed that he no longer cared about anything except his now influential wife as they tried to consolidate power and fashion out a dynasty.
“It looks like they are hunting down everybody who took part in the struggle. I, for one, if I want to say that I did nothing. All those accusations were lies,” she said.
“I think there is a disconnect because what is going on in the country right now, you can see the so-called leader is even fighting his own soldiers, sacking his own soldiers, shouting (at) his own soldiers.”
Mujuru said previous opposition parties failed to unseat Mugabe because they lacked a revolutionary history, which she was privileged to have and would certainly give Mugabe a good run for his money in the 2018 general elections.
COMMENTS
I must admit that I am really struggling to make a personal decision to support or to disown Mujuru’s new party.
This is mostly due to Mujuru’s closeness to Mugabe from the time of independence up to the time she was expelled from the party towards the end of 2014. She has always been party to the corruption, violation of Human Rights, rigging of elections.
Recently she was asked about the election rigging by ZANU PF and she professed ignorance. This suggests that she means that there has been no rigging in elections when it is generally believed and accepted that Mugabe’s party has been rigging elections through the use of the dreaded CIO, Mudede’s office, intimidation of voters through the use of traditional leaders to herd their subjects to the polling stations to vote for Mugabe and his party, the use of torture centres to instil fear into people not to exercise their inalienable human right to vote for the party or people of their choice.
All this was happening just below Mujuru’s nose if she was not party to it as she claims but she never uttered a word against it and continues to say that she was not aware of it. Does she honestly think that people believe this mischievous nonsense.
The party has many dubious characters who caused untold hardships to the ordinary people when they were still in the ZANU PF fold such as the Chipangano leader Jimmy Kunaka, the notorious former War Veterans leader Jabulani Sibanda, the self claimed ‘ZANU PF taskman’ Kudzai Mbudzi and many others. With such characters in the new party’s fold one understands why some people are not comfortable with this new project as they justifiably believe that it could be another ZANU PF project.