EMBATTLED Former Vice President Joice Mujuru allies are planning to launch a new political party soon. The party to be called, 'PATRIOTIC FRONT LIBERATORS' PLATFORM (PFLP) will be launched in Botswana by the end of this month. It is believed the new political party seeks to compete with President Mugabe or any other ZANU PF candidate in the elections in 2018. Former ZANU PF Number 2 Cde Joice Mujuru is being touted as the party's presidential candidate although at the moment, disgraced former Secretary for Administration Didymus Mutasa is being regarded as the party leader with expelled former War Veterans chair Jabulani Sibanda as his deputy.
During meetings to regroup and re-energise their charges after the ZANU PF December Congress that saw several Mujuru allies demoted to ordinary card carrying members and Mujuru herself axed from her number 2 post in both government and the party, the Mujuru faction bearers among them Rugare Gumbo, Ray Kaukonde, Didymus Mutasa, Webester Shamu, Olivia Muchena and several others resolved to pursue at least four strategies which include fighting from within, forming a new party, engaging President Mugabe and seeking legal recourse in their quest to reverse the outcome of Congress. The ZANU PF Congress elevated former party legal secretary Cde Emmerson Mnangagwa to the position of Vice President together with Cde Pelekezela Mpoko who also filled the ZAPU slot in the Unity Accord to land the Second Vice President post. Congress also endorsed the Women's League boss candidate elect First Lady Dr Grace Mugabe apart from creating a single centre of power who is First Secretary and President Cde R G Mugabe.
In his much publicized press statement advertised in the private media earlier this month, the soon to be expelled Didymus Mutasa averred that the ZANU PF 6th People's Congress resolutions were null and void because they were done by unelected party stalwarts and mafikizolos (jonny-come-latelies) who have hijacked the party. He said that the process leading to Congress was flawed adding that he only recognized President Mugabe and no one else after the Congress.
But President Mugabe slapped down his averments, describing him as a stray donkey and a stupid fool when he was addressing party supporters who had come to welcome him back home from his Far East holiday at the Harare International Airport recently. Realizing the President was not going back on his purge of the Mujuru allies who had resolved to assassinate him ahead of the December Congress, Mutasa attempted to do a U-turn when giving an interview to a South African Mail & Guardian newspaper last week when he said that President Mugabe was a visionary leader who would not be easy to replace in the near future. "He is going to leave someone and we are worried that the person whom he will leave will not be as good as he was", Mutasa was quoted saying. This was against his earlier statement in which he said that President Mugabe had deliberately alienated himself from the people and that his standing as a rational thinker and a continental statesman had all but eroded away.
Mutasa who comes from Manicaland will soon join his other colleagues from the same province such as Two-Boy Edgar Tekere, Simba Makoni, Ndabaningi Sithole and Morgan Tsvangiral who all left ZANU PF to form their own parties but were rejected by the people. Tsvangirai was a member of ZANU PF who rose to prominence between the 1980s and 1990s when he was seconded to head a trade union of mainly mine workers in Shamva's Trojan Mines where he was working as a tea-boy. His foreign funded MDCT has lost elections to ZANU PF since its formation in 1999 and has split more than five times.
According to reports, Mutasa intends to unite with other disgraced former party members such as Dumiso Dabengwa, Simba Makoni and a well known tribalist Abel Siwela who leads Mthwakazi Liberation Front; a regional political party which has been advocating for an independent Ndebele State in the Matebeleland regions. The USAID is financing the new party.
(On the picture, American Ambassador to Zimbabwe Bruce Wharton with Energy Mutodi at the ZANU PF Congress last December. Energy Mutodi is a member of ZANU PF).
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