From forgotten football players to touts, fortune seekers are rushing to take advantage of the push by President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s loyalists to have his term extended beyond 2030 by forming Zanu PF affiliates pledging loyalty to the 83 year-old ruler.
According to the constitution, Mnangagwa must retire in 2028 after serving two terms of five years each but there is now concerted lobbying by a faction loyal to him to change the constitution to help him hang on to power.
The campaign is backed by a coterie of controversial businessmen, who have been donating money and luxury vehicles to the affiliates that claim to be pushing for economic development.
Almost every week, there is a new affiliate that announces its arrival, including bizarre ones like TopSoup4ED.
Harare last week witnessed the official launch of Ama2K4ED where a staggering US$700 000 was raised through donations from controversial businessmen.
Former Zimbabwe national soccer team coach Sunday Chidzambwa and ex-Highlanders player Gift Lunga Junior appeared in short videos pledging allegiance to a hitherto unknown organisation referred to as Former Footballers and Coaches4ED.
This publication has since established that Zanu PF’s commissariat department submitted the first batch of 70 organisations seeking affiliate status with the ruling party.
Critics said the sprouting of the affiliates was driven by patronage, fear and internal power calculations.
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The organisations cut across a broad spectrum of sectors, and include groupings such as teachers, journalists, doctors, artisans, miners, mechanics and farmers, alongside faith-based, youth, women’s and pensioners.
The commissariat department said more applications continue to be received and will undergo the same registration and verification processes.
“They are meant as alternative avenues to campaign for Mnangagwa's extension of his presidential term to 2030,” said analyst Jealousy Mawarire
He said the affiliates were also avenues for corruption by Zanu PF benefactors and tenderpreneurs.
“The so-called financiers help themselves to state resources on the pretext that the money is going to these affiliates,” Mawarire said.
“They get government tenders, they extort foreign investors, demanding 5-10% from their investments and this money is used to find the affiliates, debauchery and the move towards illegally extending Mnangagwa’s tenure as president so the looting continues with presidential immunity.”
MDC-T information and publicity officer Chengetai Guta described the affiliate programme as a “smokescreen” meant to legitimise Zanu PF’s long-term political ambitions.
“These so-called affiliates are meant to create the illusion that the 2030 agenda is unstoppable. It is an elaborate hoax designed to drain people’s hope,” Guta said.
Labour, Economists and Afrikan Democrats president Linda Masarira described the affiliation drive as a “survival and accumulation strategy.”
“Zanu PF is no longer just a political party, but a gateway to the state,” Masarira said.
“They are registering in the hope of accessing vehicles, allowances, farming inputs and protection.
“At the end of the day, this looks like a patronage-driven expansion rather than ideological growth.”
Political analyst and Chinhoyi University of Technology part-time lecturer Catherine Maboya said the development should be viewed through the lens of Zanu PF’s succession politics.
“This is about creating parallel structures and internal power balancing,” Maboya said.
“Zanu PF has a long history of manufacturing structures to dilute counter-balancing factions.
“Affiliates are used to undermine existing party organs, create loyalists outside formal structures and influence conferences, congresses, party primary elections and succession battles.”
Another Chinhoyi-based analyst, Marvelous Chichetu, said the rise in affiliates was driven more by fear than loyalty.
“This is fear-driven alignment, not popularity or confidence in leadership,” Chichetu said.
“People affiliate for protection because neutrality has become dangerous under the current political system.”
Opposition leader Wurayayi Zembe said many affiliates were motivated by financial gain.
“Zanu PF has become a commodified and commercially corrupted enterprise,” Zembe said.
“These affiliates expect immediate benefits, not governance based on conviction,”
Centre for Natural Resource Governance director Farai Maguwu accused some mining affiliates of exploiting political alignment to engage in illegal activities.
“Politics has become the biggest enterprise in the country. If you affiliate to Zanu PF, you gain access to resources and, more importantly, impunity,” Maguwu said.
“Some mining affiliates are criminals smuggling minerals under the cover of political affiliation.”
Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe president Takavafira Zhou also condemned education-sector affiliates, labelling them “criminals and conmen.”
“They swindle money from already suffering teachers in the name of empowerment, charging up to US$50 for so-called workshops under the Teachers4ED banner,” Zhou said.
Justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi who is also the party’s legal secretary, has been directed to initiate legal processes to implement the 2030 resolution.
In 2023, a shadowy Zanu PF affiliate, the Forever Associates Zimbabwe (FAZ) with reported links to the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), was accused of undermining Zanu PF structures to engineer Mnangagwa’s re-election.
A number of election observers including from the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) flagged FAZ for wrongdoings including the intimidation of opposition supporters.
The FAZ also ran Zanu PF’s primary elections, and left the party divided.
Zanu PF director of information, Farai Marapira, however, said the growing number of affiliates showed the party’s popularity.
“The big number is testament that Zanu PF has solutions to the problems affecting people,” Marapira claimed.
“It shows that citizens are taking advantage of the opportunities that come with aligning with Zanu PF.
“They want to work and be part of Zanu PF. It is the only party that embodies and encompasses everyone.”
On more than five occasions this year Mnangagwa said he was not interested in remaining in power beyond his current term, but has not done anything to stop those pushing the 2030 agenda.
