Zimbabwe’s first lady, Grace Mugabe, has accused Zimbabwe’s beleaguered vice-president, Joice Mujuru, of planning to kill her “Gaddafi style” and of helping her own family steal money from a mining company executive.
Mugabe also cattily suggested Mujuru should not wear tight clothes as she has a “cellulite” problem.
These accusations, many of them laughable, and which analysts say are “destabilising” bankrupt Zimbabwe, are the latest in a barrage of allegations being made against Mujuru in the state’s much abused daily newspaper, The Herald.
The reports carry no bylines and insiders say they believe they are choreographed and written by Mugabe’s senior supporters in the cabinet.
The plot so far, in Harare, according to analysts, is that Mugabe’s insults against Mujuru are orchestrated by her husband, President Robert Mugabe, who will be 91 in February, because he is fearful that Mujuru will oust him as Zanu-PF’s next presidential candidate at the party’s elective congress in two weeks.
The president has made it clear he wants to die in power, and at present he is in fair health, although his memory is unreliable, according to some. He depends more and more on his wife to nudge his memory.
Robert Mugabe says he wants to be the party’s presidential candidate at the next elections in 2018.
Efforts to dislodge him in 2007 were unsuccessful after delegates were obliged to vote with a show of hands and not a secret ballot.
Speaking to a group of cross-border traders on Tuesday at her headquarters in Mazowe, about 30km west of Harare, Grace Mugabe said Mujuru had been telling people that once Mugabe died, she would draw Grace close to her “and put me in her pocket”.
“She said ‘the day her husband dies, I will drag her in the streets, people laughing at her while her flesh sticks on the tarmac surface’. She said we would ‘do it the Gaddafi way of dragging and parading her (Grace) on the tarmac’.”
Gaddafi, bleeding and terminally wounded by gunfire, was dragged through the streets screaming in agony before he died.
Mugabe told the women traders Mujuru was the “real weevil” in Zanu-PF, an insult her husband had used against his information minister Jonathan Moyo, before they were recently reconciled.
Mugabe also described Mujuru as an uneducated person who could not interpret the constitution well. She said the president was under pressure to fire Mujuru but she hoped the vice-president would quit.
Mujuru denied all charges levelled against her at the weekend and said she was a servant of the people and would continue in office according to the constitution.
Mugabe and her followers have managed to get most of the Mujuru-supporting Zanu-PF provincial chairmen chased from office in the past few weeks, but the chairs do not have power within the party to elect new leaders. That power rests with about 140 senior party bosses in each of the 10 provinces.
Derek Matyszak, of the Research and Advocacy Unit, the only person who has recently attempted to analyse the complex Zanu-PF constitution, says the Mugabes may have called on Mujuru to resign, because they are not sure how much support she has among voting delegates to the December 2 congress, and there is not enough time to “work on” dissenters who support the vice-president.
However Zanu-PF provincial leader, Josaya Hungwe, from the Emmerson Mnangagwa faction, said the president should appoint the top five party leaders, not the congress delegates.
“There is no one who is going to be voted into office except the president, who should then appoint the people he wants to work with.” If this happened it would defy the Zanu-PF constitution, but the party’s politburo meets tomorrow and many analysts believe it will be changed.
Mugabe said that although the Zanu-PF constitution had been amended in 2004, to ensure one of the two vice-presidents was a woman, Mujuru could be replaced now as the national charter was senior to the party document and “a man can replace her”.
Several Mujuru allies have recently fallen by the wayside, among them former party spokesman Rugare Gumbo who was slapped with a five-year suspension, while war veterans former leader Jabulani Sibanda was expelled from the party.
Gumbo was “politely” questioned by the police at the weekend, and he told the Daily News, a newspaper previously persecuted by Zanu-PF, that he was “not afraid”.
He said the audio recording mentioned by Mugabe of him allegedly plotting to assassinate the president was not his voice. He said the recording was produced via “voice morphing. That is what is happening and they are now attributing their recordings to people aligned to the vice-president”.
The Herald said on Wednesday that Mujuru’s daughter, Nyasha sold a “stolen vehicle” to a Harare woman and used an “unregistered National Deed of Trust” to open a bank account which the family used to swindle money from mining personality, Anne Ncube.
One of Mugabe’s supporters, former Zanu-PF women’s league secretary, Oppah Muchinguri, who recently stepped aside for the president’s wife, said the president had assisted and “marked” his wife’s doctorate issued recently by the University of Zimbabwe. Mugabe only registered for the PhD earlier this year, and academics say her doctorate has disgraced Zimbabwe’s tertiary institution.
Mujuru came to office after the party’s constitution was changed in 2004 to ensure a woman was in the party’s presidium. This thwarted Mnangagwa’s plans to win the post as he was higher up the party’s ranks than she. Manoeuvring to get Mujuru to the top was managed by her late, powerful husband, Solomon Mujuru who died in a mysterious fire three years ago.
Daily News Foreign Service