Editorial Comment: Caution vital in Zanu-PF cleansing

zimpZANU-PF was shaken in the last four months of 2014 after frightening details surfaced of an internal plot to overthrow President Robert Mugabe and replace him with Joice Mujuru, his deputy then.Mujuru’s loyalists actually considered assassinating the President if other ways to remove him from office failed. Information emerged of Mujuru allegedly consulting sangomas, some Nigerian, others local, seeking magical powers to depose the President and her succeeding him at Zanu-PF’s Sixth National People’s Congress in December.

The scheme did not materialise after party cadres rallied behind their leader and came down hard on the plotters. Votes of no confidence were passed in nine provincial chairmen who associated with the Mujuru conspiracy. Later, party members voted out of office her more ardent loyalists who sat in the Central Committee. She lost the Central Committee election in her home district, Mt Darwin, while Didymus Mutasa lost in Headlands.

Rugare Gumbo was initially suspended for five years but later expelled. Jabulani Sibanda was sacked from the party outright and Enoch Porusingazi received a five-year suspension from holding any position in the revolutionary party. Temba Mliswa, a greenhorn who rose meteorically to become the party’s provincial chairman for Mashonaland West, was sacked as well. Mujuru and Mutasa were also sacked for the dangerous game they attempted on President Mugabe.

Zanu-PF had to demonstrate strength to punish the transgressors regardless of their seniority.

The rumour mill has been working since December that more leading figures in the Mujuru camp would be disciplined.

This happened on Thursday when the Politburo fired former Mashonaland East provincial chairman Ray Kaukonde and ex-Politburo members Olivia Muchena, Flora Bhuka, Tendai Savanhu, Dzikamai Mavhaire, Kudakwashe Bhasikiti and Claudious Makova from the party. David Butau and Kudakwashe Dope got the same punishment. Callisto Gwanetsa, Amos Midzi, Nicholas Goche, Munacho Mutezo and Jason Machaya, among Mujuru’s most devoted foot soldiers were suspended for periods ranging from three to five years.

The party has judged that it is better to fire or suspend them and proceed with oneness of the spirit than keeping them for some kind of uneasy unity. We agree with that decision.

However, one can argue that while those who associated with Mujuru’s plot had to be told they behaved badly, there was no need for the party to take what looks like excessive action on Thursday.

Midzi, Savanhu, Mutezo, Goche, Bhuka, Machaya and Gwanetsa appeared to have accepted their fall from grace with humility, not making as much noise as Gumbo, Mliswa, Sibanda and Mutasa. Hopefully they are willing to be rehabilitated and have their suspensions lifted before 2020.

As we have said before, the Mujuru rebellion stands condemned, but some of the people who assisted her in this were led astray unwittingly, and possibly now regret having been used. There is a chance that such people could be rehabilitated. However, this cannot apply to Gumbo, Mutasa, Mliswa, Sibanda and possibly Mavhaire and Kaukonde.

It is good Cdes Petronella Kagonye, Miriam Chikukwa, Beatrice Nyamupinga, Paddy Zhanda, and Lillian Zemura were exonerated.

Kaukonde, Muchena, Mavhaire, Bhasikiti and Butau are Zanu-PF legislators. Their expulsions mean the party would soon start the official process of having them removed from the House. Vacancies would then be declared in their respective constituencies and by-elections held. Of the 14 suspended, about eight are MPs. They, however, will not lose their seats but cannot be elected to any party post over the next five years.

Therefore, we will have five more by-elections soon. In addition to the 14 to be staged in formerly MDC-T-held constituencies, and other vacancies created by deaths, earlier expulsions by Zanu-PF, we will have almost 30 new MPs by year-end since elections in 2013.

By-elections cost money, money which the country does not have. Furthermore, the electorate would remain in election mode, which is not good.

Ordinarily, disciplinary action is necessary for any party to maintain its coherence. Any political party, more so a ruling one like Zanu-PF, cannot accommodate disruptive comrades because that poses a threat to itself and government business as well as national development.

But Zanu-PF appeared, by and large, to have dealt with the ringleaders and their rebellion. Perhaps there was and is no need for more punitive action. We say this as party spokesman; Cde Simon Khaya Moyo on Thursday hinted additional members would be punished shortly.

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