Former Vice-President Joice Mujuru has rubbished claims from some political quarters that she could be weighing her options with a view to jumping back to Zanu PF, saying that will never happen.
By XOLISANI NCUBE
Speaking directly for the first time in response to the allegations, Mujuru told The Standard on Friday: “Do you see Teurai doing such a thing?” (Teurai-Ropa is Mujuru’s liberation war name).
The former VP usually speaks through former Zanu PF spokesperson Rugare Gumbo and ex-administrator of the party Didymus Mutasa, who have aligned with her in her new political endeavours.
The Standard managed to secure a brief interview with her in which she insisted on accurate quotes, failure of which she said no interviews would be granted in the future.
“I have more important people’s things to do than to talk about non-existing issues. Uri kuona zvichiitwa naTeurai izvozvo? [Do you see Teurai doing such a thing as re-joining Zanu PF?] When I am ready, I will do what the real suffering people of Zimbabwe want me to do,” she said.
Her statement follows utterances by ex-Zanu PF provincial chairman for Mashonaland West Temba Mliswa, who claimed that Mujuru was working with a Zanu PF faction dubbed G40.
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“Zimbabweans must learn to respect others and even respect themselves,” Mujuru said. “I am a person of my own ways… I don’t just do things. I have my own way of doing things.”
Gumbo, who now acts as the spokesperson of an outfit linked to the former VP, yesterday corroborated Mujuru’s statements, saying it was “wishful thinking” for Mliswa to suggest Mujuru wanted to return to Zanu PF.
“How can she go back to a party that ill-treated her like that? There is no way she is going back,” he said, adding that Mujuru had made it clear she would be contesting for the presidency in the 2018 elections.
“These allegations are mere dreams which should be forgotten. It is the work of the agents who are bent on distorting information,” Gumbo said.
He said Zanu PF was paying agents to do the “dirty work of misleading the masses”.
Political analyst Alois Masepe said one would have to be “insane” to want to go back to a party that was fraught with so many problems.
“It is a fact that she was ill-treated and to imagine her going back is too far-fetched. The ruling party is on fire, why would Mujuru want to go back?” he questioned.
Masepe said it would take a lot of persuasion and wooing to get the former VP to go back to a party that is “highly unstable”.
He, however, said politics was very unpredictable.
“Politics is the art of the possible, so one can never be certain of how things will eventually turn out,” Masepe said.
Mliswa, the former Hurungwe West MP who was kicked out of Zanu PF together with Mujuru and several other senior members, recently told our sister paper NewsDay that the ex-VP would only be powerful if she returned to Zanu PF.
Along with Mutasa, Gumbo and many others, Mujuru is part of a loose coalition of former Zanu PF liberation stalwarts, reportedly mulling the formation of a party currently going by the name People First.
Mliswa claimed Mujuru was now working with Young Turks within the ruling party opposed to the ascendancy of Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa to the presidency.
The group (G40), according to reports, boasts among its ranks the likes of Zanu PF political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere, Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo and Mugabe’s nephew Patrick Zhuwao.
Although they all deny belonging to a faction, this has not stopped internal party hawks from linking them to the ambitious group.
“The G40 has realised that it is losing grip. They are losing the internal war with Mnangagwa because the on-going restructuring exercise has put Mnangagwa firmly in charge. His [Mnangagwa’s] people are in charge of Manicaland, Mashonaland West and Mashonaland East,” claimed Mliswa.
