Businessman Kudakwashe Tagwirei’s backers in Zanu PF are accused of launching his presidential bid using the cover of a mobilisation campaign that involves bus tours across the country.
The Zanu PF youth league recently started the in-bus political interaction also known as ‘Politics Mubhazi’ where tours from Harare to other towns and cities are organised for young people.
Organisers of the tours say they are meant to discuss political ideology, history and party principles, but critics say it is factional interests especially to favour Tagwirei, who is said to habour presidential ambitions.
The tours are led by Zanu PF youth league deputy political commissar Taurai Kandishaya, a key supporter of the businessman.
Zanu PF insiders said the tours are meant to capture one million young Zimbabweans through the planned 10 000 bus trips that will each have 100 passengers.
The organisers allegedly use the tours to collect phone numbers of participants, which are added to WhatsApp groups for direct and unmediated political campaigning.
“It is a digital voter database being built in plain sight,” the source said.
The bus tours have also been linked to the so-called Vision 2030 Movement, which is said to be pushing for the extension of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s term by two more years.
However, there is growing apprehension in Zanu PF circles that it is another platform to promote Tagwirei’s ambitions.
Zanu PF is ploughing ahead with its plans to extend Mnangagwa’s term beyond the constitutionally guaranteed two five year terms for a president.
If the ruling party succeeds in its plans, the 83 year-old ruler would stay in power until 2030.
Some in Zanu PF say Tagwirei’s backers want to position the businessman to take over from Mnangagwa even in the event that he steps down before 2030.
A senior official said the campaigns had the potential to destabilise the ruling party, but the party leadership seemed oblivious to the danger.
“What is perhaps most alarming is the deafening silence from Zanu PF’s top leadership,” the official said.
“Party chairperson Oppah Muchinguri, secretary general Jacob Mudenda, political commissar Munyaradzi Machacha, and secretary for finance Patrick Chinamasa, all alleged to have received substantial support in cash and luxury vehicles from Tagwirei, have done nothing to rein in the rogue campaign.
“Even President Mnangagwa appears either unwilling or unable to control the unfolding insurgency within his own party.”
The official said Tagwirei’s “early and illegal campaign” had opened the floodgates for chaos as other aspiring presidential candidates would also do the same, turning the next two years into a permanent campaign season.
“It will be a period of instability, patronage politics, and heightened uncertainty for an already suffering nation,” the Zanu PF politburo member said.
“What we are witnessing is not just early campaigning. It is the weaponisation of stolen public resources to capture the state by a man already accused of looting.
“The institutional collapse within Zanu PF is now enabling a criminal takeover of the political process.”
Last year, on more than four occasions Mnangagwa said he would not stay in power beyond 2028 because he is a constitutionalist but Zanu PF at its annual conference last year passed a resolution to amend Zimbabwe’s constitution in order to extend his term.
The move is seen as an attempt to block Vice President Constantino Chiwenga from rising to the presidency. Chiwenga was instrumental in Mnangagwa’s rise to power when he led the coup that toppled the late Robert Mugabe in 2017 when he was the army commander.
