Fights within ZANU-PF, sign of a weak opposition

The ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front is now dominating the headlines in both private media and online publications which normally focus on the opposition. But most of the stories are about rifts in the ruling party. 

According to the reports, Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga and his faction are opposed to the extension of Mnangagwa’s term in office arguing that it is Chiwenga’s turn to take over.  Some reports even say Chiwenga feels betrayed because Mnangagwa had said he would serve only one term, but he now wants a third term or to extend his rule until 2030.

Mnangagwa has stated that he is stepping down at the end of his term but no one seems to be buying that.

ZANU-PF is now divided over Mnangagwa’s plans to stay on while the country’s constitution says a president serves only two terms, according to the reports.  Jabulani Sibanda’s leadership of Bulawayo province is on the line. Mary Mliswa’s political future is also in jeopardy. Even the arrest of Neville Mutsvangwa, son of  Christopher and Monica Mutsvanga, high profile politicians in Mnangagwa’s administration, is political. And so is the arrest of businessmen Mike Chimombe and Moses Mpofu while their business colleague Wicknell Chivayo is scot free.

The fights seem to be escalating but what everyone seems to be ignoring is that fights within ZANU-PF surface when there is a weak opposition. ZANU-PF currently has 192 seats in the 280 member national assembly, which is more than a two-thirds majority. 

Although the opposition has 87 seats (one is vacant), it is divided into factions with each claiming to be the Citizens Coalition for Change. There is the faction around Sengezo Tshabangu whose leader is now said to be Welshman Ncube.  Jameson Timba, who is currently under arrest, claims to lead another faction. Some legislators claim their leader is still Nelson Chamisa though he dumped the party in January and has not formed another party since.

Former ZANU-PF legislator for Uzumba Maramba-Pfungwe, Simbaneuta Mudarikwa, summed it all in a wikileaks cable dispatched to Washington on 10 February 2010 when he said that the ruling party was like a stick of TNT, susceptible to ignition and 

disintegration. He said ZANU-PF was like a troop of baboons, incessantly fighting among themselves, but coming together to face an external threat. 

Mudarikwa made these remarks two years after ZANU-PF had been clobbered by the Movement for Democratic Change in the country’s first harmonised elections. The party, however, managed to extricate itself from the defeat to form a government of national unity, rejuvenated itself and has won three subsequent elections after that though there have been accusations of rigging.

The latest elections in South Africa where the African National Congress failed to win a majority and was forced to form a government of national unity must have sounded alarm bells to ZANU-PF.

Zimbabwe elections are more than four years away but the media is already engrossed in succession battles, a sad development indeed, especially when the country is facing serious food shortages and a poor economic growth.
Below is what Mudarikwa told US embassy officials in Harare on 9 February 2010:

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