Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s propaganda chief Jonathan Moyo was stopped in his tracks by the old guard of the ruling Zanu-PF when he tried to elbow his way into the top echelons of political power.
Their move came as Moyo began openly to make a power play ahead of the party’s critical congress scheduled for December. The congress comes at a time when Mugabe has indicated he will step down as president of Zimbabwe when his present term expires.
Moyo has of late been making open attempts to build a power base for himself in his rural home in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland North province.
In the process he has found himself in conflict with powerful rivals within the party.
Moyo recently clashed with Zimbabwean Vice-President Joseph Msika over the government’s seizure of a farm, Kondozi. Although Moyo managed to hold on to the farm, Msika warned that he would not be defeated by ”little immoral boys”.
The high-profile clash, which was widely interpreted as evidence of a scramble for power, has deepened the divisions within the faction-ridden Zanu-PF.
Moyo threw fuel on the fire three weeks ago when he launched a thinly veiled attack on Zanu-PF spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira.
In the state-owned daily The Herald Moyo criticised Mugabe’s interview with British Sky News.
He said those who still believed that it was better to promote Zimbabwe’s interests through the ”colonial and imperialist” media houses rather than on the ”national media” were ”outdated”.
This was seen as a broadside against Shamuyarira, who had facilitated the interview without Moyo’s approval.
In his outburst, Moyo also suggested that Mugabe had wasted time answering questions from ”British intelligence operatives masquerading as journalists” that were either ”very crude or very stupid”. This was seen as an unwitting attack on Mugabe, and it further infuriated Zanu-PF leaders.
Shamuyarira, the president’s confidant and a former journalist, apparently thinks that if he is allowed to speak to the global media, Mugabe could be useful in fighting negative publicity about Zimbabwe.
By contrast, Moyo seems to think that exposing Mugabe to long interviews with ”hostile” media organisations can only worsen the situation, especially at a time when the president seems to be losing his grasp on many issues.
As shown over the past three years, Moyo’s strategy has been to ring-fence Mugabe and control the free flow of information.
Following hard on the heels of the government’s enforcement of its repressive media laws, which resulted in the banning of the Daily News and other papers in January, new measures are planned to gag Internet and e-mail communication. The government is targeting Internet service providers, who could soon be forced to divulge the source of any e-mail deemed objectionable, unauthorised or obscene.
The new regulations mean that Internet service providers will have to sign a contract agreeing to cooperate with the authorities in tracing the sources of ”offensive” e-mails.
It forbids the service providers to undertake any ”anti-national activities”. But most of the Internet firms have vowed to resist the official censorship drive.
The clash between Moyo and Shamuyarira sparked a series of events that appears to have led to Moyo’s isolation.
It is understood that the attack on Shamuyarira forced Zanu-PF chairperson John Nkomo to complain in his weekly column in the party newspaper mouthpiece, The Voice, of lack of discipline and insubordination. Moyo was seen as the target.
Matters came to a head last week when Nkomo was openly slammed in The Herald by war veterans over the current tussles over land and farms. War veteran leader Joseph Chinotimba attacked Nkomo over the issue.
Angered by the rising trend of attacks on senior party officials, Zanu-PF bigwigs closed ranks and confronted Moyo during the politburo meeting.
Insiders say Shamuyarira tabled the issue before luminaries such as Msika, while retired General Solomon Mujuru — widely seen as the Zanu-PF king-maker — led the assault on Moyo and other ”undisciplined cadres”.
Zanu-PF sources say the attack in the politburo has left Moyo weakened and isolated.
After the politburo meeting, Nkomo wrote another column that insisted that ”party members need to respect hierarchy”.
Moyo’s situation was worsened by Mugabe’s statement, last week, that party officials who have been unprocedurally nominated as Zanu-PF candidates for next year’s general election will be rejected.
Moyo is one of those. His supporters in Matabeleland North recently claimed he had been nominated by ”consensus” in a move seen as an attempt to help him avoid internal primary elections. Zanu-PF big shots are said to be plotting to block Moyo in the primaries to ensure that he remains a powerless appointed MP.
However, observers say that, despite the setbacks, Moyo is not finished yet, as Mugabe still needs his services as a spin doctor.