Own Correspondent | As the Chinese government continues to openly show its hand in the volatile local politics, the country’s deputy ambassador to Zimbabwe, Zhao Baogang, has controversially called out ‘ chameleon’ Jonathan Moyo.

Baogang, was responding to Moyo’s assertions in a recent widely circulated interview that Zimbabwe was a puppet of the Chinese government. He took to Twitter, posting a curt response to the exiled academic and politician Moyo :“in the past decades he changed colors many time just for power.he is power thirsty and his words never believable.”

To which a visibly annoyed Moyo, attacked the diplomat back posting a response: “
Obviously democracy is alien to your communist self. It’s your coup colours that are now known to Zimbabweans. Just because you got away with murder in 2017, does not mean you’ll cross that river at the same place again. You’ll soon learn that Zimbabwe is not chicken business!”

Below is the interview, published in the local daily Newsday, in which Moyo gives his views on role of the Chinese government, that Baogang who was at the airport to welcome General Constantino Chiwenga, back from China, was forced to respond to.
Jonathan Moyo | What happened has no precedence, save perhaps in banana republics. And the fact that it happened the way it did, has certified Zimbabwe as a banana republic. You cannot have the senior vice-president, who had been away critically ill and was receiving treatment in China for some five months, returning on a special Chinese plane to be received by China’s deputy ambassador in Harare, who was head of the welcoming party with no government or ruling party officials. That’s unheard of. The inescapable impression, if not reality, is that China was demonstrating its muscles and exposing Zimbabwe as a Chinese puppet.

While it is tempting to conclude that the Chinese did not give the Zimbabwean government flight arrival details, which is not sustainable because Chiwenga’s Zimbabwean security was there in numbers, this clearly means that things have fallen apart. There’s now a shell of a government with no centre.

Zanu PF bigwigs did not expect Chiwenga to return, looking brand new, with the Chinese calling the shots and Zimbabweans playing second fiddle. Mnangagwa was offering Joice Mujuru the vice-presidency held by Chiwenga, while Zanu PF bigwigs were busy jostling for the same position and harassing Chiwenga’s allies in the military, government and in Zanu PF; and hoping that the party’s Goromonzi conference would consign Chiwenga to the dustbin of political history.

So, the return of a well-made up and well-groomed Chiwenga, with a presidential look, has turned things upside down in the corridors of power. A different power matrix is definitely loading, and the question is not whether it will materialise, but how it will do so and when.