There are growing signs that factions within Zanu-PF will push for an extension of President Robert Mugabe’s mandate by pushing through contentious constitutional amendments which would allow him to stay on until 2010.
This means presidential elections in 2008 will be deferred as Zanu-PF seeks to take advantage of its majority in Parliament and the Senate to push through the constitutional amendments.
The hint that Mugabe will stay in power for the next three years came last Saturday from a columnist known as Nathaniel Manheru, of the state-controlled Herald newspaper. Former information minister Jonathan Moyo confirmed that Manheru’s real identity is George Charamba, Mugabe’s spokesperson and secretary for information.
”When Zimbabweans go to the polls in 2010, polls to choose their president and members of Parliament, our repining private media, the British and the Americans will have died from confounded predictions. That is my prediction,” the column said.
The growing push to back three more years of Mugabe appears to be fuelled by internal Zanu-PF power struggles, and seems to have poured cold water on Vice-President Joyce Mujuru’s ambitions to take over as interim president in 2008.
Already political temperatures are boiling within Zanu-PF ahead of the party’s crucial annual conference slated for next Thursday.
”Those that support Mujuru were anticipating prospects for recovery with a new leadership face,” says Zanu-PF insiders, but others, ”feel Mujuru was on an ugly mission to weed out those aligned to [Rural Housing Minister Emmerson] Mnangagwa,” hence ”they feel better off with Mugabe.”
So far, three provinces have submitted recommendations that Mugabe amend the Constitution to hold presidential elections at the same time as parliamentary elections in 2010.
Presidential elections are currently set for 2008. Midlands, Mavingo and Harare passed the resolutions this week.
When Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa tabled the proposed constitutional amendments last July, various options existed for Zanu-PF. These included reducing the current parliamentary term from 2010 to 2008 and holding presidential and parliamentary elections simultaneously, or having both elections in 2010 with the Parliament and Senate electing an interim president to run the country between 2008 and 2010.
Should Mugabe extend his term, Mujuru will have to wait until the 2010 elections.
Insiders within Zanu-PF feel the development is a boost for a faction aligned to Mnangagwa who controversially lost the vice-presidency to Mujuru two years back.
Mnangagwa’s faction believes that if Mujuru takes over, ”there was [a] likelihood of a damaging political witch-hunt against her rivals” that would split the 43-year-old party.
Daggers are now drawn, as other factions within Zanu-PF are confused about whether to endorse the new resolutions.
”She has rubbed many people the wrong way already,” said an insider within the party’s Manicaland province who feels she shouldn’t rule. ”We would rather settle with Mugabe until the situation stabilises in 2010,” he said.
While the decision could serve the interests of certain Zanu-PF factions, it ”certainly would harm prospects for economic recovery,” says Lovemore Matombo, the president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.
”Another extension of Mugabe’s term will be disastrous for the country,” says John Makumbe, a political scientist with the University of Zimbabwe.
”You need to build national consensus on how to resolve the national crisis. It does not matter if Zanu-PF goes ahead and propose these amendments as this will not solve anything. We need a new democratic Constitution, not piecemeal amendments which are done without involving all stakeholders,” says Professor Welshman Ncube, founding secretary general of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.