While we are all made to believe nothing is happening inside the Munhumutapa building enclosure, Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa (ED) has withdrawn from pursuing the (Mugabe) forced early retirement option, in which he planned all in the lead up to 2013 elections as part of his succession plot.
The below piece explores the spectacle now taking place between Emmerson Mnangagwa(ED) and First Lady Grace Mugabe.
Mnangagwa’s plan was to force a palace coup working in cahoots with foreign nations: China and some western countries but things went terribly wrong at the initiation stage and the grandmaster of the political chase is now onto Mnangagwa’s case thwarting the ‘malafide’ action.
What we are witnessing in the Grace rallies is a culmination of the fight to defend incumbency.
Looks like Grace prevails once again as Mnangagwa accepts defeat.
Intimidated by the rolling countrywide rallies Mnangagwa last week into the weekend appears to have succumbed from pursuing the forced early retirement option, which he planned in the lead up to 2013 elections as part of his succession plot.
It was simple. In order to circumvent the hurdle posed by the absence of popularity with people ED intended by hook and crook to get Mugabe elected into power. Meanwhile the ED design entailed sullying bob’s tenure with both poor economic performance and the rigged election leveraging on that to force the incumbent out before completing his term.
Now it would appear ED has to wait, in vain, for the natural option of bob’s incapacitation or passing on or go underground once again. But then when you shoot at a king as a rule you should not miss.
The capitulation drama all happens in ED’s political backyard of Midlands province where the first lady wad on a scheduled meet people rally. It was short-lived.
Ironically it would be one Kizito Chivamba, a protegé of ED that would fire the first salvo marking the premature but somewhat conclusive (at least for the moment) cessation of hostilities. It was a shot fired from the hip of emotions and amateurish indeed.
Acknowledging one of the VPs he would lose an important western region constituency when he deliberately mispronounced the dignitary’s name as ‘Mboko’ instead of Mphoko. The game was over for ED from that moment on.
With the two Vice Presidents in attendance when it was Grace’s turn to address the crowd the wily first lady would seize the moment, in manner now familiar, to propose a truce with ED on her terms.
Simple the terns appeared but in essence that was all to ED’s takeover plan.
Grace names her price that there be constitutionality and that ED likewise allows Mugabe to finish his term.
Unlike the Mashonaland East former Zanu PF guru, Ray Kaukonde, ED who was for the first time attending the drama filled Grace rallies would succumb during this feat of public humiliation. ‘Ndizvo amai’, he is reported to have responded.
The drama that unfolds thereafter was like kindergarten stuff. It would be filled with swings from threats to expose old skeletons in the cupboard made at a previous rally in Mbare to virtual ‘hugging and kissing.’
It was now time for Grace who owns a dairy farm to express the basis of her friendship with her latest victim as one based on ‘ukama igasva’ axiom.
To the gullible public she would tell the fable of ED pleasuring the friendship with gifts of milk while she in turn reciprocated with potatoes. It was but celebration time when naturally the victor comes through as magnanimous.
Looks like for now the war of attrition in the succession issue of Zanu PF is once again relegated to a latent stage, albeit a dangerous development that may entail more vicious options that a tottering economy like that of Zimbabwe can hardly afford.
As we conclude just a searching question.
The public humiliation aside, what is it that is in the cupboard, which made Grace so powerful over ED as to extort a truce from him?
Ndega zvangu!