New minister has ‘blood on his hands’
MASSACRE: SHIRI COMMANDER OF HATED FIFTH BRIGADE
Deployment of senior members of the military is profoundly shocking – analyst.
Zimbabwe’s president has sworn in a new Cabinet that includes ruling party loyalists as well as figures in the military, whose takeover helped oust former leader Robert Mugabe.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa said after the ceremony yesterday it is a priority to revive Zimbabwe’s battered economy.
Among the new Cabinet members are Maj-Gen Sibusiso Moyo, the foreign minister, and Air Marshal Perence Shiri, the agriculture minister. Mnangagwa dropped several initial appointees because of a requirement that ministers should be members of parliament. The rule did not apply to the two military officers.
Moyo announced the takeover that led to Mugabe’s resignation after 37 years in power. Mnangagwa, fired by Mugabe as vice-president, was selected by the ruling Zanu-PF party to succeed Mugabe.
Mnangagwa came under fire on Friday for the Cabinet because it sidelined the opposition.
Observers sharply criticised the line-up and the choices drew groans of dismay from many Zimbabweans.
“The deployment of senior members of the military into the Cabinet is profoundly shocking,” said Piers Pigou of the Brussels-based think tank, the International Crisis Group.
Their appointment suggests “the army has gained so much influence in government, it is going to start to dominate government,” said Abel Esterhuyse, a strategy professor at Stellenbosch University.
Shiri, as commander of the notorious North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade of the Zimbabwe National Army in the ’80s, presided over the deaths of thousands of civilians in the Matabeleland province in what was supposedly a crackdown on armed dissidents. – AFP