(Last Updated on November 4, 2015 by Editor)
ZIMBABWE – Divisions are deepening among former Zanu-PF members expelled from the party as former Vice President Joice Mujuru continues to dither on launching a party.
Some members like former cabinet ministers Nicholas Goche and Webster Shamu have tried to retrace their steps to the ruling party but have been largely snubbed.
Those who have vowed not to rejoin the ruling party are now clashing on the issue of strategy.
Former Mashonaland West Zanu-PF chairman, Temba Mliswa, is leading a group criticizing Mrs. Mujuru for allegedly failing to show leadership and urging her to allow the youth to lead.
“What new thing is (Mrs.) Mujuru offering? She has been in successive Zanu-PF governments. She must pass on the baton stick to the young generation of leaders.”
But hitting back at Mliswa has been former Masvingo Provincial Affairs Minister Kudakwashe Bhasikiti accusing him of working in cohorts with a Zanu-PF faction allegedly led by Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
“Mliswa is working with the Mnangagwa faction; we know he is not his own man.” Mliswa disputed the allegation.
Mrs. Mujuru is a former guerrilla fighter and the widow of the late army commander General Solomon Mujuru, who died in a mysterious house fire in 2011.
After holding cabinet posts in every government since independence in 1980, Mrs. Mujuru came under heavy attack from Mr. Mugabe’s wife, Grace, who was promoted to head Zanu-PF’s powerful Women’s League at the last party congress in December.
Apart from the allegations seen as grounds for Mrs. Mujuru’s expulsion, the first lady also charged that the former vice president was incompetent and had let her husband do most of the work.
Higher Education Minister Jonathan Moyo though surprised many when he claimed in an interview with BBC that the accusation that there was a plot to kill Mr. Mugabe was “political banter.”