Marondera West Member of Parliament Ambrose Mutinhiri resigned from the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front and Parliament on Friday saying he could not be part of a government that came to power through a coup.
But the Herald today said Mutinhiri had resigned because he was appointed interim leader of the National Patriotic Front which is being instigated by members of the G40 faction of ZANU-PF that was backing former first Lady Grace Mugabe.
The military intervened on 15 November to stop “criminal elements” from taking over the government.
The Herald said Mutinhiri met former President Robert Mugabe and his wife at their Blue Roof mansion on Thursday and resigned the following day.
Mutinhiri said he had resigned because government and state institutions had been captured by the Zimbabwe Defence Forces in blatant and unprecedented violation of the constitution of Zimbabwe.
“As a trained soldier, a former freedom fighter, a former ZIPRA Commander during the liberation struggle, a former diplomat and a former cabinet minister, I am too aware of not only the values and ethos of Zimbabwe’s armed liberation struggle and the subsequent role the founding commanders of the liberation envisaged for the national army in independent Zimbabwe but also of the functions and limits of the ZDF as enshrined in the Constitution of Zimbabwe authored through a people drive process and adopted after a national referendum as recent as 2013,” Mutinhiri said.
“The fundamental values and tenets of both Zimbabwe’s heroic liberation struggle and the Constitution of Zimbabwe dictate that executive authority is derived from the people and not from the gun. In other words, the enduring principle of Zimbabwe’s armed liberation struggle and constitutional democracy is that politics must always lead the gun. The ZDF coup of 15 November 2017 violated a cherished heritage of our armed liberation struggle and of our hard-won constitutional democracy.”
The Herald said Mutinhiri met Mugabe again yesterday together with Jealousy Mawarire who was spokesman for Joice Mujuru’s Zimbabwe People First, and little known Shephard Nyakudanga and Nyasha Vera.
The paper said Grace Mugabe was desperate to protect her business empire which includes 21 farms.
Below is Mutinhiri’s statement on why he resigned:
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