On Thursday, police used
tear gas and water cannons to disperse hundreds of military veterans who were
demonstrating in Harare, the capital. The veterans were upset with what they
described as criticism by Grace Mugabe, Mugabe’s wife and a prominent member of
a political faction.
Crocodiles Lacoste shirts
DNA tests and accusations of stealing underwear and radios.
Sniping around these topics
highlights the intensifying battles in Zimbabwe’s faction-ridden ruling party
over who will succeed President Robert Mugabe, in power for 36 years.
Mugabe, the world’s oldest
head of state, recently warned officials of his ZANU-PF party to stop insulting
each other.
A lot of the bitter
quarrels, which come ahead of Mugabe’s 92nd birthday on Feb. 21, happen on
Twitter and other social media platforms, providing Zimbabweans with a stream
of nasty, colourful and sometimes entertaining quips that would have been
unthinkable not long ago.
None of Mugabe’s current
close allies has challenged his rule, which began with independence from white
rule in 1980 and has been marked by economic hardship and contentious relations
with the West. The disputes within the ruling party are the result of Mugabe’s
failure to groom an obvious successor, said Gabriel Shumba, a human rights
lawyer and chairman of the South Africa-based Zimbabwe Exiles Forum.
“It has become so heated
because Mugabe has deliberately kept the lid on the discussion,” Shumba said.
In a new challenge to
Mugabe, his former vice president, Joice Mujuru, this month registered a rival
political party and plans to run for president in elections scheduled for 2018.
Mujuru was fired from her
position in December 2014 after 10 years as Mugabe’s deputy for allegedly
plotting to unseat the veteran ruler, accusations she denied. The 60-year-old
then formed her own movement called Zimbabwe People First.
A key figure in succession
talk is Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is also justice minister and a
veteran associate of Mugabe dating to the guerrilla war against minority rule
in what was then Rhodesia. He is widely known in Zimbabwe as “the Crocodile”
because he was a member of a guerrilla group with that name. His supporters
have begun identifying themselves as Team Lacoste, because the French designer
label has a crocodile logo.
Then there is “G40,” short
for Generation 40, a group that is associated with Grace Mugabe, who has raised
her political profile. Higher Education Minister Jonathan Moyo coined the “G40”
term, which refers to young ruling party members vying for leadership
opportunities.
Grace Mugabe tore into
Mnangagwa’s faction last week.
“I don’t lose sleep over
being labelled G40,” said the first lady in the local Shona language at a rural
rally on Friday. She criticized party youths wearing Lacoste labels and said
political rivals were out to kill her family.
A recent back-and-forth
string of thieving allegations between Moyo and Chris Mutsvangwa, the minister
of war veterans who is close to Mnangagwa, has grabbed the attention of many
Zimbabweans.
Moyo accused Mutsvangwa of
stealing female combatants’ underwear for resale from the drying lines at
training camps in neighboring Mozambique during the 1970s war against white
rule. On Twitter, Moyo has described Mutsvangwa as “a petticoat thief” and “a
male thief of female undies now playing Rambo in newspapers about the
liberation struggle.”
Mutsvangwa denied the
allegations and fought back by accusing Moyo of stealing radios from a
benefactor during the war and of eventually deserting the 1970s struggle
because of a factional dispute. Mutsvangwa also described Moyo as a “Rasputin”
figure — an apparent reference to his links to Grace Mugabe and has said Moyo
should take a DNA test to prove he does not come from a bloodline hostile to
Mugabe.
Grigori Rasputin was a
faith healer alleged to have been close to Alexandra Feodorovna, the wife of
Russian Czar Nicholas II. He was loathed by some of that period’s Russian
officials.
Source: AP
they are both living beyond reality time to go gbam!
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