HARARE – With factionalism refusing to die in Zanu PF, anxious power-brokers in the party are scheming to keep President Emmerson
Mnangagwa at the helm of both the former liberation movement and the government for the next decade, the Daily News can report.
Well-placed sources who spoke to the newspaper yesterday said the move by influential Zanu PF officials in its provincial structures was intended to keep at bay “ambitious” party bigwigs who stand accused of harbouring “unwelcome presidential ambitions”.
All this comes after one of Mnangagwa’s two deputies in the party and in government, Constantino Chiwenga, recently told Zanu PF supporters that Mnangagwa was “the chosen one” — in a surprising public re-endorsement of
the president which fired anew raging speculation that a faction in the former liberation movement
wanted the Zanu PF leader to serve only one term as president.
It also comes after Mnangagwa himself had, from the blue, hinted in September that he would serve his two terms as the country’s president,
in line with Zimbabwe’s new Constitution.
What makes all these developments more interesting is that Zanu PF will hold its annual conference in Esigodini, Matabeleland South, next
week — where Mnangagwa will address party delegates for the first time since he dramatically assumed the leadership of the former liberation movement last year.
One of the sources who spoke to the Daily News said provinces were “stampeding” to nominate Mnangagwa as the party’s candidate for the country’s 2023 presidential elections — a mere four months after the Zanu PF leader began his first term as head of the country following the hotly-disputed July 30 polls.
In this regard, Harare, Bulawayo, Mashonaland West, Mashonaland East, Matabeleland South and North provinces, had already endorsed
Mnangagwa as their 2023 presidential candidate.Daily News