Zimbabwe’s Information Minister Jonathan Moyo is being reined in by the Zanu-PF supreme decision-making body, the Politburo, for publicly attacking his rivals in the party leadership.
This is the second time in two months that the Politburo has asked party boss President Robert Mugabe to deal with Moyo.
There are now signs that Mugabe may be listening, although his options for dealing with the Information Minister may be limited. Some analysts point out that Mugabe needs Moyo’s combative character ahead of the 2005 parliamentary elections, now only eight months away.
Zanu-PF information head Nathan Shamuyarira — a rival who has been on the receiving end of attacks by Moyo — was tight-lipped about the party leadership’s intentions. He professed to know nothing, despite it being an open secret that all is not well in the party.
In a show of confidence in Shamuyarira who runs the party paper, The Voice, Mugabe granted the newspaper’s editor Lovemore Mataire an exclusive interview, saying that whoever succeeds him must have participated in the liberation war. Party sources saw the statement as sidelining Moyo, who is alleged to have fled the Mgagao Training camp in Tanzania in the late 1970s.
Political analyst Professor Heneris Dzinotyiwei of the University of Zimbabwe said Moyo’s style had “been antagonistic” and not consultative, as was customary in Zanu-PF. Attacking senior party leaders openly “is not in line with normal Zanu-PF style”, said Dzinotyiwei.
Dzinotyiwei did not agree that Moyo had launched the attacks with Mugabe’s blessing.
“President Mugabe has a style of handling issues. He tends to let people go on and on before intervening. He might have to intervene at a later stage,” said Dzinotyiwei.
Another of Moyo’s rivals, Zanu-PF national chairperson John Nkomo, who also chairs the Presidential Land Resettlement Committee, presented a damning report in April implicating 329 people — including top party officials — in receiving more than one farm, a violation of the one-person-one-farm principle of the land reform programme.
Nkomo provoked the ire of Moyo when he sent land withdrawal letters to his office, demanding that he return public property. Moyo responded by publicly attacking Nkomo and denying the allegations, despite claims by Nkomo’s office that it had evidence against him.
Last month Moyo attacked Zanu-PF vice-president Joseph Msika for refusing to acquire a farm owned by Kondozi, a horticultural export company, under the land reform programme. Msika reacted swiftly calling Moyo “an immoral little boy”.
In the meantime, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Sport, Aeneas Chigwedere, has been banned from attending the 2004 Olympic games after the host country invoked the European Union travel ban on 95 senior members of Mugabe’s government.
Mugabe’s government is under increasing international pressure to stop human rights violations and persecution of political opponents.
Chigwedere had received Olympics accreditation and a flight tickets to Athens on Wednesday.
“We have the feeling that they [the Greeks] have been subjected to strong pressure by the British and possibly supported by America,” Chigwedere said. “They have not given us any explanation other than that I’m Mugabe’s minister.”
Zimbabwe already has 11 athletes, accompanied by other Zimbabwe officials not on the EU ban list, in Athens.