Former Minister exiled Professor Jonathan Moyo has spoken on the coming elections, which he says are ‘G-40’ elections, as well as other issues including his Zanu PF membership and the November coup. Below is part of the interview published in The Standard paper.
On 2018 elections Moyo says: The 2018 poll is what political scientists call a “critical election” in that it is as historic as the one in 1980, which laid the foundation for Zimbabwe’s first republic under the Lancaster constitution.
It’s a critical election because it’s going to be characterised and defined by a historic realignment of voters in a major generational way that will lay the foundation for the country’s second republic based on the new 2013 Constitution.
Whereas the 1980 election was dominated by the Independence Generation — which was principally made up of a broad coalition of nationalists, veterans of the liberation struggle, peasants, workers and students — the 2018 election is dominated up to some 64% by the freedom generation, which is largely composed of compatriots who were either 10 years old, or were not yet born in 1980.
Seven years ago, in 2011, I described this demographic as Generation 40 or G40. So, make no mistake about it; the 2018 election is a G40 election. This is historic.
Moyo explains the coup : The claim that the so-called G40 did not see the coup coming is false and preposterous.
Amai Dr Grace Mugabe warned about it on several occasions and in public.
I wrote to President Mugabe about the coup plot under confidential cover more than a year before November 15, 2017 on January 8, 2016 based on what Patrick Chinamasa had told me and on July 5, 2016 based on information I had been given by impeccable sources.
I also raised the matter in the video I presented to the Zanu PF politburo on July 19, 2017 about Mnangagwa’s coup plot against President Mugabe.
So, of course, we saw the coup coming and gave appropriate warnings at various times.
But we did not ever consider to resist it violently through counterforce, an option that was always available, but which was undesirable and therefore unthinkable.
JM: I think that’s now for historians to unravel. But one unfortunate but true explanation is that President Mugabe never ever believed that Mnangagwa and Constantino Guveya Dominic Chiwenga would ever depose him in a military coup.
President Mugabe was impervious to that possibility because he trusted these two men more than he trusted anyone else.
The fact that Mnangagwa and Chiwenga, of all people, joined hands and used the military to depose him is something that I’m 100% sure President Mugabe cannot understand, let alone believe, to this day, yet this is exactly what happened: Chiwenga conspired with Mnangagwa to oust President Mugabe in a military coup.
It is not surprising that both Chiwenga and Mnangagwa are finding it difficult and in fact impossible to go out there and campaign for the 2018 elections because they know only too well that they did the ultimate Judas Iscariot act: they sold out and used the violent arms of war to humiliate the one person who groomed them and made them what they are today.
This fact of treachery and betrayal of President Mugabe by Chiwenga and Mnangagwa is painful and totally unacceptable to an overwhelming majority of members of what was Zanu PF before November 15, 2017.
That’s why Zanu PF is today dead. All you have is Junta PF, which is failing to explain to former Zanu PF supporters what happened to President Mugabe and why.
It’s also the reason why the likes of Obert Mpofu are chickening out of representing their constituencies.
They don’t want to face the people because they have no explanations for their treachery and betrayal of President Mugabe.