Reports that President Robert Mugabe all but threw his weight behind Defence minister Sydney Sekeramayi in the succession race are quite telling as they do not only confirm the obvious fact that the long-serving leader is the one behind factionalism within his Zanu PF party, but also assert his leadership legacy, which from the very beginning was sustained by divide and rule tactics.
The Mark Chavunduka Column
It is my regarded view that it is no coincidence that the president’s reported remarks while briefing his party’s leadership at the first of many lined up Zanu PF youth political rallies in Mashonaland East came barely a day after pronouncements by Higher and Tertiary Education minister Jonathan Moyo to the effect that Sekeramayi is more senior to one of the front runners to succeed Mugabe, Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa and therefore, deserves to take over.
Although both political pronouncements were made in non-official forums, with Moyo explicitly stating that his submission on Sekeremayi’s seniority were an expression of his own views, it was quite telling that there weren’t or at least yet to be any formal complaints against the renowned academic in the ruling party structures given the sacred nature of the succession debate within Zanu PF.
What this proves is that Moyo’s antics of throwing the cat among the pigeons had the full blessings of Mugabe, who himself has a long history of fanning divisions and factions within Zanu PF and in the liberation movement.
It is quite stunning for some of us (who belong to the so-called born free generation) to draw parallels of what we understand to have transpired in the liberation struggle through various history sources and what is unfolding in our own lifetime, particularly in respect of leadership of the country.
One such historical source of some key events of the liberation struggle is a biography of Mugabe, titled after his surname and written by David Smith and Colin Simps with Ian Davis published in 1981, which sought to present an in-depth profile and account of the 93 years old leader’s ascendency to the leadership of the liberation movement and later the country.
While in a way, the book concludes by positing Mugabe and his late wife Sally as ideologically disciplined or as extreme Marxist-Leninists who in post independence Zimbabwe represented the long sought after reconciliation of a nation and indeed continent — the biography reveals how the president has always used divide and rule tactics to affirm his leadership.
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Mugabe has always had a way of dealing with his internal and external opponents in a manner that would divide not only his party, Zanu, but also the liberation movement as a whole and by extension confuse the leadership of the independent southern African states or frontline states as they were called.
There are a good number of instances that occurred during the liberation struggle covered in the Mugabe biography that caught my attention.
For the purposes of this submission, I will briefly snip through two interesting accounts of how Mugabe would initiate or strategically position himself in a faction for personal gain.
The first relates to how Mugabe spearheaded a faction, or perhaps in present day terminology parallel structures while in prison to depose of the then Zanu leader Ndabaningi Sithole.
In this case, Mugabe had been leading a group of Zanu detainees that cast doubts on the leadership of Sithole, whom they were accusing of failing to adjust to imprisonment among a litany of other charges, including misappropriation of party funds and running parallel communication with party members.
It is reported in the biography that Mugabe conspired with other executive committee members to take decisions without Sithole.
Having already strategically positioned himself, Mugabe was to emerge winner of a secret ballot organised by executive members disgruntled by Sithole’s leadership with the last straw being his unearthed assassination plot of the then Prime Minister Ian Smith.
As Reverend Bill Clark, then the chaplain general to all prisons, recalls in the biography, “Ndabaningi Sithole, during his years of detention in Salisbury prison, became more and more remote from those of his comrades locked up in the same block.”
“There were constant murmurings of discontent against his leadership. Party funds into which contributions were paid by various organisations and by devious routes were being held, it was claimed, in several of his private bank accounts,” he added.
Clark recalled Sithole’s assassination plot at the heart of the reasons for the regrouping of the Mugabe led members.
“Despite the disenchantment with his leadership, he held on to it until he was caught in the act of throwing instructions encased in oranges over the prison wall to members of his party who, by pre-arrangement, assembled as visitors waiting for the gates to be opened. There were also members of the special branch lounging around. They confiscated the oranges. The fruit had been cut and expertly stuffed with instructions on how prime minister Smith was to be assassinated.”
Sithole was later to stand trial and upon being found guilty, he made a statement that was to present Mugabe and those coalescing around him an opportunity not only to further isolate the embattled leader but to promote Mugabe as successor.
The second instance that demonstrated Mugabe’s active role in stirring factionalism within Zanu as covered in the biography was how he tactfully took over leadership of both the party and army.
Actually, the first few pages of Chapter 4 of the biography give us a glimpse of some ethnical factionalism that played out within Zanu, a challenge that the party is seized with to this day.
The biography recounts an explosive Zanu bi-annual conference held in Lusaka around September 1973 that was marked by what the authors described as unmistakable personal ambitions of members of the party leadership.
“There were few political differences among them but the lust for power sought a base by exploiting the ethnic composition of the party, and especially it’s fighting forces,” remarks the book’s authors.
While an attempt to depose Herbert Chitepo at this conference never materialised, the veteran nationalist was later to be assassinated and with a special international commission implicating chair of the Zanu command Josiah Tongogara, Mugabe was presented with a golden opportunity to take over leadership of both the army and party.
Mugabe was to later exonerate Tongogara of any wrong doing in the Chitepo assassination, the biography posits Mugabe as already having started to build legitimacy both within and outside Zanu as the undisputable leader of army and party.
This resulted in a frosty relationship between Mugabe and Tongogara, thus creating fractures in both the party and state.
There is a lot more detail on the character and person of Mugabe obtained in the biography, most of which present an interesting narrative of how the liberation party and movement was riddled with factionalism, as is the case today and the veteran leader takes full advantage of them.
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*As The Standard celebrates 20 years, it pays tribute to the late Mark Chavunduka, the founding editor of the paper.
