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President Mugabe

Felex Share Harare Bureau—
President Robert Mugabe yesterday said senior Zanu-PF members fuelling “incessant factional fighting” in private newspapers and on social media should be “born again” or get expelled from the revolutionary party. Cde Mugabe said it was clear some party members no longer trusted each other and there was a lot of backbiting going on.

Addressing the first Zanu-PF Central Committee meeting for 2016 in Harare yesterday, the President also spoke against senior members who were using their influence of youths and women to cause divisions in the party.

He said it was worrying that after the elimination of the Joice Mujuru-led putchist cabal from Zanu-PF, divisions continued which were destroying the party. “We’ve discovered that some are working on the succession issue, where they’ll be in the event the President goes and that there are factions,” President Mugabe said.

“Factions that accuse each other and have found a right boxing ground which is that of opposition papers. That’s where the fighting takes place. This is said against someone and that someone also, sometimes in defence but sometimes in his own offensive way, makes a critical statement damaging the other side.”

Cde Mugabe said it was not just the opposition papers that constituted the fighting ground but also the Internet.

“It’s on the Internet where we get all kinds of abuses of the party, of individuals, all of us who hold positions are attacked on one occasion or another. There are no holds there at all. The language is abusive and quite rotten and people take cover because the Internet nets shield them. I don’t know whether that way we can achieve true unity. We may have physical togetherness, bodies together as we’re now but the minds quite in contest with each other,” he said.

The Central Committee, the party’s supreme decision making body outside Congress, discussed progress made on the implementation of Zim-Asset, preparations for the winter-wheat farming season, National Disciplinary Committee report and drought relief activities taking place around the country. President Mugabe bemoaned lack of trust among party members.

“So one asks where are we going? Are we really trusting each other or that trust has been eroded somehow? Let’s have an exercise of introspection, looking inwardly at ourselves and examining whether we’re guilty of this criticism or we’re not,” he said.

“But what’s very clear is that we don’t trust each other. Lots of backbiting of each other, organising against each other and wishing the downfall of each other. I would wish to appeal to you to turn over a new leaf and be born again so you can redirect your energy towards revamping and injecting a new life into the party and setting ourselves as models for the youths.”

He said youths should be united, focused and policy driven. Said President Mugabe: “Surely the leadership of the party should provide that element of unity, provide that historical understanding that enable us to be what we’re as an example that our youths should follow. Compare what we’re now with what we used to be especially during the times of the struggle. Even as we stood apart, Zanu and Zapu, we still realised that that apartness didn’t prevent us from being united in terms of policy, in terms of forward looking, to see a struggle against a common enemy. That’s what led us to form the Patriotic Front in 1976.”

President Mugabe said because thousands had perished from bombings inflicted by the whites during the liberation struggle, the government had no apologies on land reform and the indigenisation and economic empowerment programmes despite negative comments from detractors.

“The losses were heavy on us and that’s why we take our independence seriously and our policies of indigenisation and empowerment in their exclusive way,” he said.

“This is how we were treated and those who treated us so badly, inhumanly brutally, cruelly, callously are those who ran away from here and have come back smiling appearing to be very human, polite now. Ukazvifunga (If you think of it) you don’t want to see a white skin.”

The President added: “That’s why our programmes must unfold and unfold in service to our people, answer issues which have to do with their lives. When we say to the outside world we’ve a policy of indigenisation and empowerment and they react by saying you’re driving away investment, we shouldn’t worry. We know what we’ve suffered and we know what we shouldn’t do to suffer again or to benefit those who made us suffer in this bloody way.”