Entry of president’s wife will add to Zanu (PF)’s turmoil
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe’s wife Grace’s grand entry into Zimbabwean politics will be dusted and sealed at the weekend when the Zanu (PF) women’s league holds its elective congress.
Mr Mugabe will officially open the congress today.
If she manages to pull through the coup d’état she will become about the most powerful woman in the party that has ruled Zimbabwe almost uninterrupted for 34 years.
Mrs Mugabe’s entry goes against the party’s election guidelines which categorically state that for one to hold elective office he/she should have been a member of the party consistently for at least 15 years and five of which should be in a leadership position.
Mrs Mugabe has no known track record in the party. But Mr Mugabe has been known in the past to break party rules by appointing upstarts, derogatorily known in Zanu (PF) as mafikizolos (Johnny come latelys); a famous example was putting Jonathan Moyo into the party politburo and into the government when he had rebelled against him in 2008.
Her entry is seen set to bring more turmoil in a party already riddled with factionalism over the Mugabe succession. At 90 he is in the sunset of his political career but has not crafted a clear succession strategy.
The results of the youth league congress held last weekend show that the faction led by Vice-President Joice Mujuru is more popular with the grassroots than the one led by Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa which, it seems, the Mugabe family prefers.
Political analysts say Mrs Mugabe’s entry into the political arena is driven by the family’s desire to safeguard its young members’ fortune when Mr Mugabe’s demise comes. Mrs Mugabe is only 49 years old while her children are still very young.
She has acquired a fortune for herself in recent years. She has grabbed most of the important farms in the Mazowe Valley including a huge chunk of a citrus estate owned by stockexchange-listed Interfresh Holdings.
She has built a state of the art school in Mazowe which she touts as an orphanage. But teachers at the school and parents with children attending it allege it is one of the most expensive schools in the country and is run strictly on money-spinning terms. Parents who default on school fees are reported to the police. They allege that very few of the pupils are orphans.
The Mugabe family runs one of the biggest farming estates in the country — Gushungo Holdings — which boasts 2,000 dairy cows producing 30,000 litres of milk a day. At full capacity it should produce 70,000 litres according to reports. In addition, the farm rears 5,000 pigs at any one time.
It is this empire that the Mugabes wish to protect but ironically many analysts say Mrs Mugabe’s entry into politics could be a misjudgment. Through the secretary of women affairs Oppah Muchinguri, who stagemanaged her nomination to the women’s league, Mrs Mugabe hopes to thwart the rise of Mrs Mujuru to the presidency should Mr Mugabe be incapacitated or die. The Mugabes don’t have great faith in Mrs Mujuru.
Mrs Mujuru’s husband Solomon, the first black commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, died in a mysterious fire on his farm on August 15 2011. Foul play was suspected and Mrs Mujuru and her people quietly point a finger at Mr Mugabe or his cohorts.
The Mugabes have faith in Mr Mnangagwa. He has protected them in the past, as in 2008 after the disastrous elections which Mr Mugabe lost. Reports say Mr Mugabe was about to concede defeat when Mr Mnangagwa intervened. It was he who caused the delay in the announcement of the presidential election results for five weeks while he and the military strategised Mr Mugabe’s comeback. When results were eventually announced the country had to go through a presidential runoff between Mr Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.
Mr Mugabe won the runoff after a brutal military operation that left more than 200 opposition supporters dead. On July 31 last year Mr Mugabe snuffed out the opposition in a victory attributed to the military and therefore to Mr Mnangagwa, making him the Mugabes’ best bet.
But if the Mujuru faction prevails in the rank and file at the women’s congress, as is widely expected, Mrs Mugabe would lead a league populated by “the enemy” and have set herself up against the future president.
Another hurdle lies in her way. Zimbabwean sentiment is decidedly against the emergence of a Mugabe dynasty and lobbying has already started to fight it, not only in opposition ranks but also in Zanu (PF).