A fact-finding mission by South African clergy on Zimbabwe’s ongoing demolitions campaign was ”sponsored by Britain and part of a plot to unseat President Robert Mugabe’s government”, the state-run Zimbabwean newspaper The Herald said on Friday.
”The abortive visit by a delegation of South African clergymen … was part of a large campaign by Zimbabwe’s detractors pushing for a regime change agenda,” said the paper.
It quoted unnamed government sources as saying the mission was ”masterminded by a British military intelligence operative” in the British embassy in Harare.
”Impeccable government sources said the British intelligence services, through the Department for International Development Central Africa, bankrolled the visit disguised as a fact-finding mission.”
South African church leaders this week described Harare’s razing of market stalls and shacks in townships, which has left hundreds of thousands homeless, as ”unparalleled in modern-day Africa”, following a two-day visit to the Southern African country.
A delegation from the South African Council of Churches, at the forefront in the fight against apartheid in the 1980s and 1990s, said Mugabe declined to meet them.
The Herald claimed the clerics are ”known supporters” of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which Mugabe has accused of being puppets of former colonial ruler Britain.
The church leaders met South African President Thabo Mbeki on Friday ahead of a return visit to Zimbabwe beginning on Monday to try to halt the nearly two-month-long demolitions blitz.
Moyo writes his memoirs
Meanwhile, Mugabe’s former spin doctor Jonathan Moyo, sacked earlier this year for defying Zimbabwe’s ruling party, is working on a book about his time in the government, a newspaper reported on Friday.
Once seen as Mugabe’s blue-eyed boy, the former information minister has become a fierce critic of the Zimbabwean government.
Moyo, a member of Mugabe’s Cabinet for nearly five years, was sacked in February when he chose to stand as an independent candidate in March parliamentary polls, a move that saw him winning a seat in a remote rural constituency.
Moyo has promised to reveal the inner workings of the ruling Zanu-PF in his book, the Zimbabwe Independent reported.
”It would be a betrayal of my profession as a trained academic not to write a book of my memoirs and experiences while in government and of state policies and their implications for the country and for Africa as a whole,” Moyo, a professor of political science, told the paper.
The United States.-trained academic, who is searching for a publisher, says he wants the book published before the end of the year.
”The book will be about everything I did before joining government, the reasons that led me to join government and Zanu-PF, [and] the actual dynamics in government and in Zanu-PF,” the Zimbabwe Independent quoted him as saying.
Moyo was a staunch government critic before he joined the government. But during his time as information minister, Moyo became an ardent supporter of Mugabe’s controversial policies, including the forcible seizure of white-owned land, and a vociferous critic of the West, particularly former colonial power Britain.
He also crafted tough press laws — the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act — that were responsible for closing down four independent newspapers.
Since leaving the government, Moyo is reported to have become popular as a speaker at civil rights meetings in the Zimbabwe capital. — Sapa-AFP, Sapa-DPA