Zimbabwe’s intelligence agents have bugged the phones of its former spymaster, current Rural Housing Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, and have been conducting surveillance on his two Harare homes on the instruction of President Robert Mugabe.
A senior Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) operative told the Mail & Guardian that Mugabe feared his former protégé was planning to defect from Zanu-PF, taking with him disillusioned sections of the ruling party.
Intelligence Minister Didymus Mutasa has twice, in the past fortnight, summoned Mnangagwa to the CIO headquarters, confronting him with intelligence accounts of meetings in the Kwekwe district, 250km south of Harare, where he allegedly plotted the formation of a new political party. His alleged co-conspirators are his close friend and former minister, July Moyo; Pearson Mbalekwa, who quit Zanu-PF over Operation Murambatsvina; and Mugabe’s former spin doctor, independent MP Jonathan Moyo.
Mnangagwa, sources say, showed little emotion during his encounters with Mutasa and two unidentified CIO bigwigs. He denied reports linking him to a soon-to-be-launched United People’s Movement, challenging his interrogators to produce witnesses to support their claims.
Mutasa refuted the claims, saying they were ”totally untrue”. But, three Zanu-PF MPs and two officials at its headquarters corroborated the information given to the M&G. Mnangagwa could not be reached for comment.
Ironically, Mugabe appointed Mnangagwa as intelligence minister after independence, a post he held for seven years. The two have walked a long road together. After Mnangagwa’s release from a prison term in the mid-1970s, three years of which were spent on death row, he became Mugabe’s personal assistant and one of his trusted comrades.
But in recent times, Mnangagwa, who holds the position as Zanu-PF secretary for legal affairs, has become increasingly isolated in the upper echelons of Zanu-PF. Party insiders say he is ”bypassed” by Secretary for the Commissariat, Elliot Manyika. ”No party correspondence comes on Mnangagwa’s table.”
His sidelining stems from the fallout over his failed bid for the Zanu-PF vice-presidency and the suspension of six provincial chair-persons of the party, who supported his faction. Mistrust and paranoia have become pervasive in Zanu-PF as powerful figures stake their claim to the reins of power when Mugabe vacates office.
Solomon Mujuru, a five-star general who headed the armed forces during the first decade of independence, and Mnangagwa are the main protagonists in the succession battle. Both have impeccable credentials in the liberation war and according to party insiders, have no discernible ideological differences.
Their enmity has its genesis in clashes over business deals. Those in the know say Mnangagwa, who controlled party and state financial interests during the 1990s, blocked Mujuru from procuring a majority share in the lucrative Zimasco mining company in the Midlands.
Mujuru pounced on the opening created by the contest for the party vice-presidency last year and prevailed on Mugabe to ditch Mnangagwa in favour of his wife, Joyce.
The standoff has already claimed casualties. The Midlands, Manicaland and Masvingo provinces contend that they are being marginalised by alliances being formed under the weight of tribalism. Insiders say Mnangagwa, a Karanga, has become the rallying point for a determined effort to break Mujuru and Mugabe’s 25-year Zezuru dominance.
Tribalism haunts ruling party
Tribalism played a part in the death of the chairperson of Zanu’s supreme war council (Dare reChimurenga), a 1976 report initiated by the Zambian government, the Special International Commission on the Assassination of Herbert Wiltshire Chitepo, found. He died in exile in 1975 when a bomb planted under the seat of his VW Beetle exploded. In a letter to his wife, Chitepo, a Manyika, told of a list of men ”the Karangas intended to eliminate”.
The Shona — Karanga, Korekore, Manyika, Ndau and Zezuru — and Ndebele are the main ethnic groups in Zimbabwe.
Historian Luise White, author of The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo, argues that once the report on the death had been published ”the idea that Zanu’s power struggles were based on ethnic factionalism took hold in many circles in and outside the party. Indeed, by the time the letter was placed in evidence, the commission had heard many versions of ethnic strife in Zanu.”
The report also cites complaints of ethnicity as the reason behind the Nhari Rebellion, a mutiny by Zanla cadres. In the early Eighties, 20 000 mostly Ndebele supporters of PF-Zapu were killed in Matabeleland and Midlands by the North Korean-trained fifth brigade of an independent Zimbabwe.
During the liberation war, the bigger Karanga and Manyika dominated the war council. Perhaps more significantly, the Zezuru had minor representation.
According to historian Terence Ranger, the term ”Zezuru,” first used by 18th-century Portuguese traders, means ”people who live in a high area” — not inappropriate for a people who now occupy all the higher echelons of power in Zimbabwe. President Robert Mugabe is Zezuru and so too is vice-president Joseph Msika. Joyce Mujuru is Korekore but married to the Zezuru kingpin. — Percy Zvomuya