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Mutasa down but not yet out

Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front Secretary for Administration Didymus Mutasa who came under a lot of flak from President Robert Mugabe for the way his office handled the youth conference and party administration in general including companies owned by the party may be down, but he is not yet out.

Mutasa who was blasted by Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Christopher Mutsvangwa for sowing seeds of disunity within the party sees to still have something up sleeve.

According to The Sunday Mail the party’s Masvingo province is reported to have endorsed him for the national chairman’s post currently held by Simon Khaya Moyo who is expected to rise to Vice-President though some from the former Zimbabwe African People’s Union feel he is not senior enough to take up the post.

The same applies to Mutasa. The post of national chairman has historically been reserved for someone from the former ZAPU so that the presidium has two people from the former ZANU-PF and two from the former ZAPU.

Mutasa has been accused of destroying the party in his quest to rise. Mutsvangwa went to the extent of calling him an opportunist who joined the liberation movement at the last minute to share the spoils. He said Mutasa had turned himself into the Manicaland supremo by misleading senior politicians there who were touted as Mugabe’s potential successors such as Edgar Tekere and Simba Makoni.

There is still four months to the decisive party congress but it seems the battle has begun. And it could be ugly.

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This post was last modified on August 18, 2014 9:49 am

Charles Rukuni

The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.

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