Dumiso Dabengwa, the senior Zanu-PF member who has rebelled against President Robert Mugabe to back Simba Makoni, says the ruling party needs reform to save Zimbabwe from ”falling into the wrong hands”.
”This is a rescue operation,” Dabengwa said after appearing with Makoni in public for the first time.
According to Dabengwa, ”the wrong hands” would be any non-Zanu-PF-led government that takes power based on Zimbabweans’ frustration with Zanu-PF’s inability to reform itself and allow new party leadership to end the economic crisis.
”The people could vote in anger, in frustration over Zanu-PF, and the country could fall into the hands of someone who would leave us worse off,” he said, denying Mugabe’s charge that Makoni’s campaign had received Western funding.
Dabengwa said he had failed to garner enough support from fellow members of the politburo to pressure Mugabe into leaving office, ”which is why we have now taken this route”.
He said that, with Solomon Mujuru, long said to head a faction opposed to Mugabe, he had tried to meet Mugabe in an attempt to stave off a split. But Mugabe ignored their pleas.
Mujuru himself has declined to discuss the matter with the media. His wife, Vice-President Joyce Mujuru, has publicly backed Mugabe.
Dabengwa was one of the liberation war’s radical campaigners, and was head of intelligence in Joshua Nkomo’s Zipra guerrilla army. He is still known as the ”Black Russian”, a name he earned after his KGB training.
In 1982, he was among dozens of Nkomo’s top lieutenants jailed by Mugabe, who alleged they were plotting against him. A court ordered their release for lack of evidence, but Mugabe invoked emergency laws and threw them into detention for four years. Dabengwa was later appointed home affairs minister after Mugabe signed a unity deal with Nkomo.
In the 2000 general election, Dabengwa lost to an MDC candidate when he stood for Zanu-PF in a district of Bulawayo. But he remained in the politburo, Zanu-PF’s top executive, where he has clashed with Mugabe in recent months.