Bob back on Moyo warpath

ROBERT Mugabe yesterday accused his on-again, off-again information minister of fomenting divisions in the ruling party.

“Don’t plant seeds of division,” the Zimbabwe president said at a funeral for a stalwart of the ruling Zanu-PF party, apparently addressing Jonathan Moyo, whom he reappointed last year.

The new broadside came after Mugabe, late on Friday, labelled Moyo “the devil incarnate”, accusing him of firing editors at state-owned newspapers who were loyal to ZanuPF and replacing them with opposition sympathisers.

“You have our minister of information wanting to put people one against another,” Mugabe told mourners at a wake for Nathan Shamuyarira, a key figurin Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, who died on Wednesday at the age of 85.

Mugabe, 90, said Moyo was using his influence over the state media to attack enemies in Zanu-PF.

Moyo has fallen in and out of favour with Mugabe since first becoming information minister in 2002.

Moyo was sacked in 2005 after being linked to a clandestine meeting held to discuss Mugabe’s succession.

Since his reappointment last year, the embattled Moyo has overseen the appointment of new editors at state newspapers and suspended the head of the state broadcaster.

“Don’t make anyone in the party a political enemy,” warned Mugabe.

“You may differ with others in the party, however, that should not make you want to attack them in the paper,” he said.

“It’s destructive ideology. We now have weevils in our midst.

“Zanu-PF has weevils within its ranks,” Mugabe told thousands of mourners gathered at a shrine on the outskirts of the capital Harare for Shamuyarira’s burial.

Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party has been riven by divisions among factions jockeying behind potential successors to the leader. — AFP