Zanu PF old guard hijacks youth rally

Source: Zanu PF old guard hijacks youth rally – DailyNews Live

Mugove Tafirenyika and Blessings Mashaya      29 June 2017

HARARE – The old guard in Zanu PF has all but hijacked President Robert
Mugabe’s youth interface rally set for Masvingo tomorrow, amid indications
that the event could be used as a platform to assert factional
preferences.

Party insiders told the Daily News yesterday that Zanu PF politburo
members, Josiah Hungwe and Shuvai Mahofa, have virtually taken over the
planning and organisation of the rally – the third to be addressed by
Mugabe this month.

Instead of making it an all-inclusive event, the Zanu PF bigwigs who are
linked to a faction campaigning for Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa to
succeed Mugabe are said to have shut out their perceived foes, including
some of the provincial youth league executive members in Masvingo, from
the preparations.

So heavily involved are the Zanu PF politburo members in the thick of
things that even provincial chairperson-elect, Ezra Chadzamira, another
ally of Mnangagwa, has been completely overshadowed, because they feel he
is not yet ripe for such a demanding task.

The rumour mill has it that Mahofa and Hungwe want to use the youth
interface rally to legitimise Chadzamira’s leadership, so that the
politburo could endorse his election at its next meeting in Harare.

Chadzamira overwhelmingly won the hotly-contested Masvingo provincial
polls last month against retired colonel Mutero Masanganise, who is linked
to the rival Generation 40 (G40) faction.

His leadership is yet to be endorsed by the ruling party’s supreme
decision-making body in between congresses after Masanganise lodged an
appeal, seeking the nullification of the result, citing irregularities in
the manner the polls were conducted.

Mahofa and Hungwe are reportedly working with provincial youth league
chairperson Norbert Ndaarombe, seen as sympathetic to their cause, and
have elbowed out of the preparations for Mugabe’s arrival other youths
suspected of backing G40.

At the provincial level, they are working with Alois Baloyi, the secretary
for administration for the main wing.

The aggrieved youths are finding themselves in an awkward situation as
they have become bystanders in preparations they should otherwise be
spearheading.

This is unlike in Marondera, Mashonaland East, and Mutare, in Manicaland,
where the organisation of Mugabe’s youths interface rallies was the
responsibility of the Zanu PF youth league. Members of the party’s main
wing only played a complementary role at the invitation of the youth
league.

Zanu PF is split between two factions namely Team Lacoste, which is
rooting for Mnangagwa to succeed Mugabe and G40, which is opposed to the
prospect of “the crocodile”, as Mnangagwa is affectionately known, taking
over from the Zanu PF leader.

While Hungwe and Mahofa could not be reached for comment, Ndaarombe
confirmed that the two are playing prominent roles in the organisation of
the event.

“It is true that we are working with them because Mahofa, as the
Provincial minister, will help us mobilise all civil servants in the
province, while Hungwe is looking for funding because as youths we may not
be able to do that on our own,” Ndaarombe said.

“The youths who are raising such issues are being used by outside forces
because we are in control of our programme because we know it is ours but
when the president is coming you cannot avoid working with our elders”.

While Mugabe has always relied on the party’s main wing to deliver votes
during elections, the 93-year-old politician is increasingly leaning
towards the party’s youth and women’s league for his 2018 campaign.

This follows his fallout last year with mainly war veterans, his former
comrades in the country’s liberation struggle of the 1970s.

This, observers say is a result of Mugabe’s realisation that with the
party sharply divided over his succession, there is a risk that the old
guard may de-campaign him in the run up to next year’s polls.

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