Psychomotor minister, Josaya Hungwe has warned that Mugabe is in grave danger of being poisoned by his ambitious underlings who are impatient to succeed him as the mindless bloodletting in the warring post-congress Zanu PF gets nastier and more confused by the day.
Giving the vote of thanks at First Lady Grace Mugabe’s rally in Gutu last Friday, Hungwe suggested that the ruling party’s seemingly-unstoppable factional and succession wars were now so bad that they could even claim the life of Mugabe.
Giving his spine-chilling vote of thanks, Hungwe — said to be a close Mnangagwa ally — urged Grace to be more vigilant about taking care of her increasingly-frail nonagenarian husband saying there were some bigwigs in the ruling party who hated him so much that they could even poison him.
In that light, he added, Grace needed to make sure that she consistently and thoroughly vetted the people around Mugabe, as well as the source of the food he ate.
“There are those who do not like him (Mugabe). They are many and some will be born tonight. We do not care about them.
“Chatinongokumbira chete amai ndechekuti musarega vachingodya pese pese (All we ask from you mother is that you remain vigilant and mind the food that Mugabe eats for he could be poisoned),” Hungwe warned.
However, he also promised Grace that Mugabe would be protected by his many supporters.
“The people who are here are his supporters. If one Mugabe enemy is born today, his supporters multiply. If one is born tonight, five supporters of his will also be born the same night,” Hungwe opined.
A Zanu PF insider who spoke to the Daily News yesterday said while Hungwe was “a little guilty of overzealous bootlicking”, the ruling party’s unending wars suggested that there was “an unhealthy stampede to succeed Gushungo (Mugabe)”.
“Unfortunately, many of those who are either fighting for the party’s top position or sponsoring their favourite candidates appear as if they are becoming increasingly impatient with the president remaining in office. This can only be destructive to the party and the country.
“It is also for the same reason that some comrades feel that what happened during the official opening of Parliament in August, when the president ended up reading the same speech as the one he presented during his State-of-the-Nation Address, was not a genuine error by officials but a calculated plot by one of the warring factions to expose him (Mugabe) as no longer fit to rule,” the senior Zanu PF official said.
Commenting further on the succession puzzle, the party bigwig said the Constitution of Zimbabwe said if a vacancy arose in the presidency by death, resignation or incapacitation of the incumbent, the political party that was represented by the departing president would have the power to select a replacement within a period of 90 days.
In the interim, the person who was the last acting president would be in charge of the country.
“Recently, the ruling party, in order to comply with the national Constitution resolved that if a vacancy occurs in the office of national president requiring the party to nominate a successor, Zanu PF can hold a congress at the insistence of the secretary for administration,” he said.