Leaning on the podium and waving his hands about dramatically, President Robert Mugabe looked as though he was conducting a puppet show. And last week, as he was talking to senior Zanu-PF party members, it might as well have been a puppet show.
For weeks, his lieutenants have been brawling in public over the party's provincial elections. The row at times was comical – one senior official even called a press conference in which his major complaint was that he was being cut out of pictures in the state media.
The press lapped up the drama, with headlines screaming about the war between factions loyal to rivals Vice-President Joice Mujuru and Justice Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa. "Mujuru to wipe out Mnangagwa", said one headline. "Mujuru mauls Mnangagwa", claimed another.
But in the end it all came down to Mugabe once again showing how he has shrewdly managed to stay in power for so long – by knocking the heads of his ambitious lieutenants together. Again, he presented himself to the party as the only leader who can unite it; the one the party cannot do without.
It's a familiar script: every once in a while, Zanu-PF factional tensions boil over in public. Mugabe lets it simmer for a while, allowing the players to slug it out in public. Then he comes gliding in – the father figure, quietening down his children and restoring order. That way, everyone sees the party cannot yet do without him. A case of "the party is divided because of me, but it will be divided without me".
Minions
In the end, the drama always ends with the scene in which Mugabe is sitting high in his chair, safe and secure, his minions taking turns to lick his boots. He then conducts his show, pulling the strings as he berates party leaders for being ambitious. Ambition, according to his message, is against the will of the people.
"Let us hear our people," Mugabe said to members of his central committee before the party conference last weekend. "They, after all, will in the end decide on who will be needed and who will not."
Which is not entirely true, if what party spokesperson Rugare Gumbo has said is anything to go by. Only Mugabe knows who he will pick to succeed him. He may not even follow the party hierarchy and appoint his second-in-command, Mujuru. The people will just have to accept it, Gumbo said.
"The president has an idea of who will take over. If President Mugabe says he wants so-and-so, who are we to question that?" And so they all fall into line, queuing up to praise Mugabe, just so they are not seen as going against "the people".
It was Didymus Mutasa who had complained that he was not getting the coverage in the state media befitting his post as party administration secretary. Mugabe, Mutasa said, cannot retire just because he is 89. He is like the biblical kings of old.
"If you read in the Bible, there are some people who went beyond 100 years but still ruled. Why can't it be repeated?" Mutasa asked.
Rabble
Besides, according to Mutasa, Mugabe is only serving his first term. "The thing to note is that baba [father] was elected for his first term under the new Constitution at the July 31 harmonised elections and the Constitution allows him to go for the second term. How can you succeed someone who has just started serving his first term?"
With Mugabe having silenced the rabble, all those who had complained about being cheated in the party elections now just have to sit down and keep quiet. Dissent, after all, would be going against the people.
After losing the election as the Bulawayo party chairperson, Killian Sibanda protested: "I do not know who tampered with the voters' roll in Harare." The roll is put together in Harare. Blessing Geza, who lost in Mashonaland West, had told the press: "It's a disaster; people were not able to exercise their democratic right to choose their preferred candidates."
There are some in Zanu-PF who want the party to stop the quarrelling and get on with fixing the economy. The elections had been an "unnecessary distraction", said Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, and he was glad they were over.
Although the latest round of fighting may be over, it will not be long before the aspirants are back, brawling again. And again, Mugabe will watch for a while, enjoying the puppet show, before once again returning to rescue the party from himself.