My beef with Mnangagwa is over Gukurahundi, Jonathan Moyo says

It does not make sense for people to conclude that I was close to Mnangagwa on the strength of one event that I became associated with by virtue of coming from the district where the event was held. Prior to the Dinyane event, there was a similar speech and prize giving event at Ntalale High School in Matabeleland South which I did not know about until after the fact. There were other Mnangagwa events elsewhere around the country and I attended none of them. So how did I become close to him simply by attending the Tsholotsho event? Add to this the fact that I was not on the panel of speakers at the Tsholotsho event, whose leading lights were Patrick Chinamasa, Jacob Mudenda and Josiah Hungwe. Claims that I have ever been close to Mnangagwa are legion yet fanciful.

My beef with Mnangagwa is rooted in his direct, instigatory and supervisory involvement in Gukurahundi atrocities; and his leading role in the enforcement of the Rhodesian State of Emergency from 1980 to 1990. While the Fifth Brigade was specifically created for genocidal purposes against Zapu and Ndebele people; and while arguments have been made to distance Mnangagwa from the Fifth Brigade under claims that he was not in charge of the army; the fact is that atrocities in Matabeleland started well before the deployment of the Fifth Brigade with Mnangagwa’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) as the frontline perpetrators of those atrocities. Under Mnangagwa the CIO was a killing machine, especially in Matabeleland where the cold-blooded killings followed gruesome torture.Even after the Fifth Brigade was deployed, it is Mnangagwa’s CIO that used to make indications of targets for the Fifth Brigade and CIO operatives used to participate in the torture and killings together with the Fifth Brigade. This is documented history.

The fact that Mnangagwa did not defend me when I was punished for attending and supporting his Dinyane High School event in Tsholotsho is not an issue to me.President Mugabe thought it was an issue on account of my anger when I narrated it to him and the politburo last year. Prior to that angry narration, Mnangagwa had openly threatened to kill me, after I presented a video on his and Chiwenga’s coup plot in the politburo in July 2017, by declaring to the politburo that the best way deal with people like me is to do what they used to do to “sellouts” in Maputo whose necks used to be separated from their shoulders. Mnangagwa’s threat to me was also a confirmation of his murderous deeds in Maputo. I sat in the politburo looking at him and thinking of what happened to my father and I got very angry, leading to my angry outburst which was referenced by President Mugabe.

All said, my considered judgment has always been that Mnangagwa is not presidential material. He is a very cruel person and his threat to separate my neck from my shoulders in the politburo and his boast that they used to separate necks from shoulders of comrades in Maputo is an example of extreme cruelty and barbarism. While he is clearly streetwise, he’s not a statesman by any stretch of the imagination.

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