Higher and Tertiary Education minister Jonathan Moyo yesterday taunted President Robert Mugabe’s spokesperson George Charamba, saying he is campaigning for a top post after the top civil servant launched an unrestrained attack on the Tsholotsho North MP last week.
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Charamba gave two radio stations an unsolicited interview last week where he made thinly-veiled attacks against Moyo, accusing him of fuelling factionalism.
Mugabe’s aide claimed a faction that did not want Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa to succeed the soon to be 92-year-old leader was fuelling factionalism in Zanu PF.
He said the group was abusing the Zanu PF leader and his wife Grace to push its agenda.
Moyo has come out guns blazing on social media attacking Charamba, whom he accuses of desperately trying to prop Mnangagwa’s faction.
The war started last weekend when Moyo revealed for the second time that Charamba was behind an acerbic column in the Saturday Herald that routinely threatens independent media journalists and is penned by Nathaniel Manhera.
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Of late, Manheru has been attacking Mnangagwa’s perceived opponents in Zanu PF.
Moyo claimed on Twitter that Charamba was looking beyond being Mugabe’s spokesperson.
“Well-placed croc sources say he is actually campaigning to be deputy chief secretary to the President & Cabinet,” the minister said in response to a tweet by a follower who suggested Charamba wanted to be Mnangagwa’s spokesperson if he succeeds Mugabe.
In the radio interview, Charamba said he was speaking as Mugabe’s spokesperson not a civil servant — an assertion dismissed by Moyo as false.
“There is no position of presidential spokesman in the Constitution of Zimbabwe or structures of the government,” the minister said. Meanwhile, Moyo said students who allegedly handed a wooden carving of a crocodile to Mnangagwa during a visit to Bulawayo Polytechnic last week were fake. He shared a picture of the students handing over the carving on Twitter.
“Somebody just shared with me this picture of fake students handing over a wooden croco yesterday [Friday] at Byo Polytechnic,” he tweeted.
When another follower asked him to define fake students he said: “Political activists not registered as students, at any tertiary or higher education institution in the country.”
Moyo and Mnangagwa were at one time allies before the political scientist was expelled from Zanu PF in 2004 for allegedly plotting the VP’s rise into the presidium.
