The Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front polls to elect a new provincial chairman for Masvingo will go ahead today as scheduled despite the pulling out of one of the candidates Mutero Masanganise.
Masanganise’s withdrawal was only announced yesterday though his letter of withdrawal to the party’s secretary for administration is dated 2 May.
The poll, which is now academic, will be more a show of strength for the other candidate Ezra Chadzamira, who allegedly belongs to the faction backing Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa, as several provincial leaders including war veterans are solidly behind him.
Masanganise was humiliated in an earlier poll that was abandoned allegedly because of the bad weather when he polled only 4 888 against Chadzamira’s 12 393.
Only 64 percent of the 408 party districts had voted.
Masanganise allegedly belongs to the faction that supports under siege national political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere which is allegedly being purged in Masvingo.
Kasukuwere himself is under fire after all 10 party provinces expressed a vote of no confidence in him.
President Robert Mugabe is now expected to decide his fate with whispers saying he is going to spare him to save the party but will remove him from the commissariat.
Firing Kasukuwere, insiders say, was likely to lead to a major split ahead of the 2018 elections as others like secretary for administration Ignatius Chomo and secretary for science and technology Jonathan Moyo were likely to walk out with him.
War veterans, who met Mugabe last year, said the commissariat should be headed by someone with liberation war credentials.
Mnangagwa, who was under siege from his appointment as Vice-President in 2014, seems to be enjoying a new lease of life which has seen him concentrating more on ways to improve the economy which most people believe is in doldrums.
Mugabe, however, this week stunned participants to the World Economic Forum when he said Zimbabwe is not a fragile state but is the second most developed country in Africa after South Africa.
One Insider reader quipped: “The(re) must be 2 countries sharing the same name”.
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