Harare - Political tension in Zimbabwe is rising, as First Lady Grace Mugabe has now begun to attack Vice-President Joice Mujuru more openly and has admitted she is campaigning to ensure Mujuru never takes over as president of Zimbabwe.
On the campaign trail this week, she suggested Mujuru was lazy and incompetent, without naming her.
In her ongoing meet-the-people tour of Zimbabwe, Mugabe is now in the Matabeleland provinces where she said vice-presidents should, in future, not be elected but should be appointed by her husband.
”Some think because you are vice-president, you just stay there and do nothing while Mugabe works for you,” she said at a rally to a small crowd on Monday.
“We want a vice-president who helps the president, not just one who piggybacks on Mugabe’s back. We no longer want that. We want people who are capable.
“You mustn’t think because you have a post you are there for ever. You must work for it,” the first lady said, according to Bulawayo newspaper, Southern Eye.
Robert Mugabe will be 91 in February, and so far has given no undertaking that he will retire.
The tension sweeping through the country in the wake of Grace Mugabe’s direct entry into politics is concentrated on the succession issue which could be more clearly defined at the ruling Zanu-PF’s elective congress in Harare in December.
Mujuru’s elevation to vice-president came in 2004, not only through her own efforts as a member of Robert Mugabe’s cabinet since 1980 independence, but with help from her powerful husband, Solomon Mujuru, who died in a mysterious fire at the couple’s rural homestead three years ago.
The other vice-president position has been vacant since the death of John Nkomo last year.
Analysts and ordinary Zimbabweans are not sure if Grace Mugabe is campaigning to destabilise any challenge to her husband’s leadership of Zanu-PF or if she is campaigning in support of justice minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, 72, Mujuru’s main rival to inherit the leadership of Zanu-PF.
“You better believe that she is backing Mnangagwa. Grace Mugabe will need to protect her wealth and status after the old man dies. She would not trust Joice to do that, so she has put herself into the hands of some of Mnangagwa’s long-time supporters, such as the present women’s league secretary, Oppah Muchinguri,” said a well-known political heavyweight from Bulawayo.
Last month Muchinguri said she was stepping aside from her post, as the first lady was her choice as women’s league president.
Information minister Jonathan Moyo has denied that Grace Mugabe had slammed Joice Mujuru in her various speeches at rallies. “She was addressing qualities that a vice-president and second secretary of Zanu-PF should have,” Moyo said in her defence.
Moyo said: “No name was mentioned and just because we have one vice-president it does not mean she (Grace) was referring to her.(Joice).
“Now that we going to be selecting a vice-president, it was more about the office and not the occupant, the past or the present, but the office as it relates to aspiring vice-presidents.”
Foreign Bureau