National and world leaders are well read people of letters. President Mugabe was and still is a man of letters. He is a well-read gentleman. I have always wondered whether Mnangagwa has ever read any book besides school and college textbooks he had to read as a student. You can tell whether a person reads books by their speech.People who read books are great speakers and great thinkers.Mnangagwa is not in this category.In any event, it cannot be right that a person who oversaw the CIO during the Gukurahundi days and the state of emergency when the CIO was a killing machine that used extreme torture methods can become a president of a constitutional democracy. It just cannot be. It is not surprising that it took a military coup for Mnangagwa to become president.He had no other path.It is also not a surprise that the same military stole the election for him. Again, he had no other path.
I should add here that between 2010 and 2014 I became very close to Chiwenga. Very close. We worked together between 2010 and 2012 to try and bring a Chinese company to mine gold in Tsholotsho with a condition that the company would build the Tsholotsho-Bulawayo road. The project almost succeeded. I was pained that it did not. In 2013, I worked with Chiwenga to manage potential explosive political issues that arose after the Zanu PF primary elections. It is Chiwenga who supported my work to put together the Zanu PF campaign team for the 2013 elections and to resource the campaign team. I spent a lot of time on the national campaign working with Chiwenga in Harare and ended up going to campaign Tsholotsho North only 10 days before the election.
When I lost the election, and I told Chiwenga of the result, he advised me to forget about it and to return to Harare immediately where there was lots of work for me to do. When I was appointed to the cabinet in 2013 as one of the five members appointed from outside Parliament, I had no doubt that Chiwenga had put a pivotal recommendation based on the work I did in leading the 2013 Zanu PF national campaign in Harare. President Mugabe said as much to me.I continued to work closely with Chiwenga from 2013 to December 2014.
Things dramatically changed after the December 2014 Zanu PF Congress that elevated Mnangagwa to vice president. Thereafter, each time an issue came up about the party or government, Chiwenga would ask me if I had checked with “Shumba”. Suddenly, everything was Shumba this and Shumba that. I was uncomfortable and unwilling to subject myself to the Shumba regime when my appointing authority was President Mugabe. I was also aware of the shenanigans that had taken place for Mnangagwa to become vice president ahead of Muchinguri. My unwillingness to subject myself to the Shumba regime is the reason there was a total and complete fallout between Chiwenga and me. He was outraged by my refusal and I was outraged by his insistence.This was very sad and tragic. The rest is history.
Next: I was not a government critic but a critical academic- Moyo
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