Punishment is expected

via Punishment is expected 3 December 2014 by Jera

In order to send the message that he is still in control, punishment of dissenters is expected. The only reason holding back the humiliated Mujuru faction from forming its own party is fear of total annihilation. The threat of prosecution (corruption, treason, sexual harassment) will probably inspire the humiliated bigwigs to remain loyal to the party.

For the sake of self-preservation and the maintenance of their business interests, the disgraced members will probably endure, in silence, whatever punishment is meted out. But what complicates the anticipated second purge is the need for Mugabe to balance punishment and keeping the fractious party together. For the sake of keeping his majority in parliament intact, Mugabe may also want to keep peace.

Mugabe has empowered himself – or has been empowered – to nominate his own VPs, and national chairman, a move designed to exclude anybody within the party who might have even the slightest difference of opinion. So afraid of being contradicted is the President that the various party members on whom a no-confidence vote was passed will be barred from congress.

To make sure that loose cannon Jabulani Sibanda does not make a scene, a nonsensical case has been opened by ZRP and the former chairman of the war vets has been belatedly charged with ‘undermining the authority of the president,’ following his ‘bedroom coup’ one-liner. There is a great deal of irony in that. It might be Mugabe’s face on every T-shirt at rallies but the President appears to have lost his authority long ago, with jungle laws prevailing in his beloved party.

Several heavyweights are said to want him gone – in a hearse, if we are to believe the assassination stories. It is literally a free-for-all as members seeking to settle personal grudges engineer ‘votes of no confidence’ and other tricks to neutralise their rivals. These same schemers have imposed upon us Grace Mugabe, a woman whose state of mind would have remained a secret, if only she had continued to smile and look pretty.

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