Senior Zanu-PF leaders loyal to former parliamentary speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa allegedly met in November 2004 to plot a parliamentary coup that would have seen Parliament order President Robert Mugabe to resign, the High Court heard on Thursday.
The allegation was contained in documents — which are minutes of a meeting of the Zanu-PF district coordinating committee for Tsholotsho district — read in court by former information minister Jonathan Moyo during the hearing of his defamation suit against ruling-party chairperson John Nkomo and politburo member Dumiso Dabengwa.
Moyo is suing the two senior Zanu-PF politicians for Z$2-billion in damages, saying they defamed him when they allegedly told Mugabe that he (Moyo) funded and led the hatching at a meeting at Dinyane school in Tsholotsho of the ”coup plot” against the president and other top Zanu-PF leaders.
Nkomo and Dabengwa deny the defamation charge.
The former information minister told the court that Nkomo in December 2004 convened a meeting of the Tsholotsho district committee at which false allegations were made that Moyo was behind the coup plot.
Moyo told the court: ”If you look at the district coordinating committee [meeting] minutes on page three when Ngwenya [Zanu-PF official] was asked by the first defendant [Nkomo] to say what happened at Dinyane [meeting], he said there was to be a parliamentary coup where President Mugabe was to be asked by Parliament to step down and be paid his package.”
The disclosure by Moyo is the first time that the details of an alleged internal rebellion against Mugabe have been divulged in public.
Moyo was fired from the government and Zanu-PF after he chose to contest the 2005 general election as an independent candidate for Tsholotsho in open defiance of senior leaders who had blocked him from standing on the ruling party’s ticket, saying the constituency was reserved for a woman candidate.
But insiders say Moyo was really the victim of internecine fighting within Zanu-PF over Mugabe’s succession. The say the reservation of Tsholotsho — Moyo’s home constituency — for a female candidate was a ploy by his enemies in the ruling party to frustrate him.
Moyo and other senior Zanu-PF leaders had backed former parliamentary speaker Mnangagwa to be appointed vice-president ahead of Joyce Mujuru, which would have placed him in a strong position to succeed Mugabe when and if he steps down.
The plot to prop up Mnangagwa fell through after it was discovered by Mugabe and other Zanu-PF old-guard leaders, who threw their weight behind Mujuru and accused those who had attempted to block her rise of in fact scheming to topple the party leadership.
Moyo has also told the court that in addition to labelling him a coup plotter, Nkomo and Dabengwa had also falsely claimed that he had received unspecified sums of money sourced from foreign persons or countries hostile to Zimbabwe.
The case, which gives a glimpse of the power struggle within Zanu-PF over Mugabe’s succession, will see more confidential documents, including minutes of several Zanu-PF committees and confidential party correspondence, being produced in court as evidence. — ZimOnline