Showing posts with label Emmerson Mnangagwa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Emmerson Mnangagwa. Show all posts

Monday, November 27, 2017

Do We Have A Budding Grace Mugabe In Nigeria?

By Reno Omokri
There appears to be a lot more in common between former Zimbabwean First Lady, Grace Mugabe, and Nigeria’s present First Lady, Aisha Buhari, than immediately meets the eye. I don’t even know why few people have connected the dots before now, seeing as they are both almost always in the eye of a media storm.
*Grace Mugabe 
For one, they are both breathtakingly beautiful although I favour Grace Mugabe. My gosh, Grace Mugabe is beautiful! If I had ever been Mugabe’s deputy, I may have preferred to inherit her rather than the Presidency were anything to befall my boss. I hope I am not giving Mr. Emmerson Mnangagwa any ideas.

But I digress, and I beg your pardon. I am, after all, a man, and women like Grace Mugabe naturally tend to have this type of effect on our reasoning faculties if truth were to be told. But beyond their ravishing beauty, both Grace and Aisha married men that were vastly older than them and this more or less made them trophy wives. Grace Mugabe is just 52 while her husband, Robert Mugabe is 93. The age gulf between them is 41 years.

Friday, November 24, 2017

Emmerson Mnangagwa: Profile Of Zimbabwe's New President

*Emmerson Mnangagwa, Robert Mugabe,
Grace Mugabe 
Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, the man known as "the crocodile" because of his political cunning, has finally achieved a long-held ambition to succeed Robert Mugabe as Zimbabwe's president.
Mr Mugabe, 93, resigned amid a military takeover and mass demonstrations - all sparked by his sacking of Mr Mnangagwa as his vice-president.
"The crocodile", who lived up to his name and snapped back, may have unseated Zimbabwe's only ruler, but he is still associated with some of worst atrocities committed under the ruling Zanu-PF party since independence in 1980.
One veteran of the liberation struggle, who worked with him for many years, once put it simply: "He's a very cruel man, very cruel."

Emmerson Mnangagwa Sworn In As Zimbabwean President

*Emmerson Mnangagwa being sworn in as
Zimbabwe's president in Harare
-Nov 24, 2017
Emmerson Mnangagwa has been sworn in as Zimbabwe's president in a ceremony at a packed stadium in the country's capital, Harare.
It follows the dramatic departure of Robert Mugabe after 37 years of authoritarian rule.
The former vice-president's dismissal earlier this month led the ruling Zanu-PF party and the army to intervene and force Mr Mugabe to quit.
Mr Mnangagwa, who had fled the country, returned from exile on Wednesday.
The opposition is urging Mr Mnangagwa, who has been part of the ruling elite, to end the "culture of corruption".

Grace Mugabe: The Fall of Africa’s Most Hated First Lady

           By Sisonke Msimang
I spent a lot of time in Zimbabwe in the mid-2000s, as the head of a human rights organization that worked across Southern Africa. Even at the height of the political turmoil in 2008, when opposition figures were assaulted in the aftermath of a stolen election, I was often struck by how deeply respectful Zimbabweans were of their president. Many people were obviously unhappy with Robert Mugabe’s leadership. Still, it was not unusual to hear people reference his role in the independence movement, to point out his clear intellectual gifts and his efforts to advance education.
*Grace Mugabe 
They had no such respect, however, for his wife. Grace Mugabe did not have a history in the liberation movement. She had done nothing for Zimbabwe under colonialism — she was too young. Ms. Mugabe instead inspired disdain. The narrative, universally accepted across the country, was that the shy young typist had stolen Mr. Mugabe’s heart and then corrupted him. Mr. Mugabe was a good man turned bad; Ms. Mugabe was the temptress who led him to his downfall.
And in a way, she ultimately did. In the wake of the military takeover of Zimbabwe’s government last week, the announcement that Robert Mugabe is no longer in charge of the country, his subsequent refusal to step down and his ultimate resignation, there is much uncertainty in the country. What is clear is that Grace Mugabe was at the center of the discontent that sparked the surprise coup; the goal, in removing the 93-year-old Mr. Mugabe, was to ensure that she would not ascend to the presidency after his death.

Thursday, November 23, 2017

End Of The Road For Robert Mugabe

By Anthony Akinola
Had Robert Mugabe bought into the philosophy of Muhammadu Buhari regarding the place of the spouse of a serving political leader, he probably would have held on to his job until God decides to remove him, Were the place of Grace Mugabe to have been in the kitchen and the other room, just as that of Aisha Buhari is in Nigeria, those desperate to succeed Mugabe as President of Zimbabwe might have tarried a little bit. But because ambitious Grace Mugabe was all along eyeing the position of her husband, those who resented such an affront have conspired to bring an end to the 37-year rule of 93-year old Robert Mugabe.
*Robert and Grace Mugabe
Mr. Mugabe, described as “brilliant, intelligent and nasty” by a British commentator, became leader of Zimbabwe after successfully leading a revolt against the regime of Ian Smith in 1980. His emergence from the trenches to lead his people received the enthusiasm and endorsement of fair-minded people who believed it was absurd for the minority white population to be ruling the majority black population as the case was in former Rhodesia. Mugabe was received warmly wherever he went, hailed by all and sundry as a war hero.

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Why Some Zimbabweans STILL Love Mugabe

President Mugabe 
It's not just loyal Zimbabwean state media that will enthusiastically wish President Robert Mugabe a happy 93rd birthday on Tuesday.
There are still Zimbabweans - and not just in the rural areas - who support and idolise Mugabe (though there's little doubt a bit of vote-rigging always helps win an election).
As one Zimbabwean tweeted this weekend: "There are many people who vote for Zanu WILLINGLY. Please deal."
So why, after years of economic hardship and international isolation, do some still love the man that critics accuse of turning the southern African country into a basket-case?
Here are some suggestions:
Powerful legacy
Like him or hate him, Mugabe played a key role in freeing Zimbabwe from colonial power in 1980. It's a victory he often likes to remind locals often ("Zimbabwe will never be a colony again" etc etc). His story resonates well beyond Zimbabwe's borders, which is why he also gets a lot of support when he travels on the continent.
Stressing the I-freed-the-country line is "chapter 1 in How to be a Dictator", Jeffrey Smith of @VanguardAfrica told News24. There are some signs that the younger generation in Zimbabwe is becoming increasingly disillusioned with the "debt" Mugabe and other war vets claim they're still owed nearly 40 years after the war for independence (As @BuildZimbabwe urged on Monday: "Don't let your loyalty become slavery. Reject the status quo"). On the other hand, legacies win elections. Higher education minister @profjnmoyo argued along these lines at the weekend.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Mugabe Must Go! – War Veterans

Agitated war veterans have reiterated their call for President Robert Mugabe to leave office now, adding derisively yesterday that they would not "waste" their time quarrelling with Zanu-PF youths who have said that they are prepared to take up arms to defend the nonagenarian.

Speaking to the Daily News, the spokesperson of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA), Douglas Mahiya, was emphatic that Mugabe - who turns a mature 93 next month - could not continue to lead the country.
*President Mugabe
He also took a swipe at Zanu-PF youth leader Kudzanai Chipanga who said earlier this week that party youths were ready to go to war against former freedom fighters and other supporters of Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, in defence of Mugabe - saying Chipanga had "no idea" about wars and their deadly consequences.

This comes as Zanu-PF secretary for administration Ignatius Chombo was also insisting yesterday at a press conference held at the party's headquarters in Harare that Mugabe would be the party's presidential candidate in next year's eagerly-anticipated national elections, as decided at the party's disputed 2014 congress.

"The youths do not know what taking up arms is all about. They only hear about it. Nobody in their right mind wants a war, especially those who were once involved in one. What the youths are saying is childish.

"What we are simply saying is that a 93-year-old may, naturally, not be fully capable of discharging their duties in the office of the president,"
 the forthright Mahiya said.

However, Chombo was adamant that Mugabe could only be challenged internally at the party's 2019 elective congress.

"Some of you, including the press elect not to read," Chombo said, adding that the Zanu-PF congress was the only party event that was held to elect the person who would represent the former liberation movement in future elections.

"We are saying this so that newspapers do not create confusion where there is none. In 2014, we elected our president.

"We said then that all those who want to be president should raise their hands. Everyone rushed to lift the president's, saying ‘we want Mugabe, he is the one we want to be president of the party'.

"This was a mandate for five years. So, anyone who wants to come in now can only do so at the 2019 congress. Logically and mathematically, it's all very clear and straightforward . . . there is no shortcut. So what is bothering our reporters?" he said - bizarrely appearing to blame Zanu-PF's worsening tribal, factional and succession wars on the media.

Friday, January 6, 2017

President Mugabe Trips Gulp US$36m

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s globetrotting has seen him splurge US$36 million on foreign and domestic travel in the first 10 months of 2016, piling pressure on a cash-strapped government that is failing to buy painkillers for public hospitals, the Zimbabwe Independent can reveal.
By Taurai Mangudhla
 
*President Mugabe and wife, Grace 
While recurrent expenditure, mostly civil service wages, gobbled 97% of the US$4 billion 2016 National Budget as of September, the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC) spent US$34,4 million on foreign trips that have yielded no tangible results for Zimbabweans. OPC spent US$1,2 million on domestic travel, according to figures obtained from the 2017 National Budget.
Mugabe’s trips outweighed expenditure by ministries such as Macro-economic Planning and Investment Promotion, Energy and Power Development, Transport and Infrastructure Development and Industry and Commerce as well as the Parliament of Zimbabwe.
The expenditure came at a time Zimbabwe failed to honour the Abuja Declaration, which states that governments should allocate 15% of the budget to health. Instead, only 9,7% (US$330 million) of the 2016 National Budget was reserved for the sector.
A huge infrastructure gap estimated at US$20 billion has also resulted in poor service delivery.
Former finance minister Tendai Biti criticised Mugabe for piling pressure on Treasury at a time the economy is floundering.
“What kind of a President spends two months outside the country on a holiday when his economy is in a fragile fiscal position?” Biti asked, adding “it’s an indication he is not fit to govern.”
Biti said Mugabe, who now prioritises his trips, was always kept in check by the opposition during the Government of National Unity (GNU) era.
“Post the GNU it is like a dog has been released from a leash,” Biti said.

Thursday, January 5, 2017

The Last Days Robert Mugabe

Zimbabwe is engulfed, and not only by a political crisis. While its leaders fight, its economy is in meltdown.

BY MARTIN FLETCHER

*President Mugabe 

With considerable trepidation, I took the lift to the sixth floor of the ministry of justice in central Harare to interview the minister. It wasn’t just that I lacked the accreditation foreign journalists must obtain to work in Zimbabwe – the interview had been arranged through unofficial back channels. The minister, Emmerson Mnangagwa, also happens to be the vice-president, Robert Mugabe’s notoriously brutal chief enforcer for the past 36 years, and the most feared man in the country. “They don’t call him ‘The Crocodile’ for nothing,” said a Zimbabwean businessman who knows him well. “He never says a word but suddenly he bites. He’s very dangerous.”

But Mnangagwa, still powerfully built at 74, proved courteous enough as we sat in deep leather armchairs in his bright and spacious office. It was not in his interest to be hostile – not at this time. He is determined to succeed Mugabe and he will need Western support to rebuild his shattered country if he does, which is presumably why he gave me an almost unprecedented interview.
Aged 92 and the world’s oldest head of state, Robert Mugabe is fading. He falls asleep in meetings, suffers memory lapses and stumbles on steps.

He delivered the wrong speech at the opening of parliament in September last year and had to deliver the right one to a specially convened session the following day. As long ago as 2008 a WikiLeaks cable from the US ambassador reported that he had terminal prostate cancer, and he frequently flies to Singapore for unspecified medical treatment – blood transfusions, perhaps, or steroid injections. A diplomatic source talked of Mugabe’s “dramatic deterioration in the last two years”, and said: “He could go at any point.”
Mnangagwa did not admit he wants to be president, of course. Given Mugabe’s paranoia, that would have been political suicide. 

On the contrary, he was studiously loyal. When I asked which politician he most admired he immediately replied: “The president.” He refused to discuss the possibility of Mugabe dying. “Under British constitutional law you don’t conceive or desire the demise of Your Majesty. Why would you want to conceive or desire the demise of my president?” he asked. He even denied that he would seek Mugabe’s job when, to borrow the euphemism with which some Zimbabweans refer to the coming cataclysm, “the portrait falls off the wall”.

“I don’t see myself doing that,” he said. Of the decades he had worked with Mugabe, he said, “I was not serving to be president. I was serving my country.”
Nobody will believe Mnangagwa’s denial – certainly not close allies such as Christopher Mutsvangwa, a former Zimbabwean ambassador to China and the leader of the “war veterans” who seized the country’s white-owned farms in the 2000s.
I had met Mutsvangwa a few days earlier in the unlikely setting of a coffee shop in the affluent Harare suburb of Mount Pleasant. It was another encounter between a senior regime figure and a Western journalist of a sort that is becoming increasingly possible in the turbulence of Mugabe’s twilight days. Mutsvangwa told me he was “100 per cent” sure that Mnangagwa would be Zimbabwe’s next president. Indeed, he and other allies of the vice-president are already locked in a vicious struggle over the succession with Mnangagwa’s potential rivals in the ruling Zanu-PF party.

Grace Mugabe, 51, the president’s intensely ambitious and avaricious wife, set things going in late 2014 after her husband made her the head of Zanu-PF’s Women’s League and a member of the party’s Politburo. She persuaded Mugabe to expel the previous vice-president, Joice Mujuru, and her supporters from the party for allegedly plotting against the president. Mujuru – who as a teenage guerrilla during Zimbabwe’s war of independence in the 1970s gave birth in the bush, shot down a helicopter with a rifle and earned the nom de guerre Teurai Ropa (“Spill Blood”) – has now set up an opposition party, Zimbabwe People First (ZPF).

Having disposed of Mujuru, Grace and a group of “Young Turks” known as Generation 40, or G40, then turned their attention to Mnangagwa, seeking to oust him as vice-president and purge his supporters from critical posts in Zanu-PF. Grace made no secret of her ambitions, flying round the country in the presidential helicopter to address “meet the people” rallies. “They say I want to be president. Why not? Am I not Zimbabwean?” she asked. To give herself gravitas, she acquired a PhD from the University of Zimbabwe in three months; the degree was presented to her by the chancellor – her husband.
But Mnangagwa has his own cabal of older party members who fought in the liberation war and despise the G40 “upstarts”, who did not – Mutsvangwa calls them “power-grabbers” and “village head boys”. His so-called Lacoste faction (the clothing company’s emblem is a crocodile) has hit back hard, using Mnangagwa’s control of Zimbabwe’s Anti-Corruption Commission to launch high-profile criminal investigations against G40 leaders. For good measure, Mutsvangwa’s war vets have turned on Mugabe himself. In July they issued a communiqué condemning his “dictatorial tendencies . . . which have slowly devoured the values of the liberation struggle”. In November they sacked him as their patron.

A secret Zanu-PF document passed to me by a reliable source shows how sulphurous the infighting has become. Emanating from Mnangagwa’s camp, it accuses G40 of plotting “political euthanasia” against the party’s founding generation and of “coercing the First Lady into a spirited campaign against VP Mnangagwa”.

The document suggests Mugabe himself created G40 because, behind his “feigned love” for his deputy, he “has always felt threatened by VP Mnangagwa and the prospect of his presidency being outshined by that of his protégé”.
The nine-page document then sets out a detailed plan to destroy G40’s leaders through “brutal character assassination”, fomenting “fights and chaos” within the group, and sowing “seeds of distrust” between G40 and Grace Mugabe.
In short, the party that has governed Zimbabwe since 1980 is sundered as never before. Beneath the bright-blue jacaranda and orange flamboyant trees that shade Harare’s broad avenues, vendors hawk newspapers that gleefully proclaim “Crunch Time For Zanu-PF Factions”, “Zanu-PF Implodes” and “Blood On The Floor”

“They’re at each other’s throats and it’s not unlikely it will end in a violent confrontation,” Ibbo Mandaza, a political analyst in Harare, told me.

But Zimbabwe is engulfed, and not only by a political crisis: while its leaders fight, its economy is in meltdown.

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

I'm Already President – Grace Mugabe

Harare – Zimbabwean First Lady Grace Mugabe has reportedly told the ruling Zanu-PF party women's league that she is already the president, as she "plans and does everything with President Robert Mugabe."
*Grace Mugabe

 According to NewsDay, Mashonaland West Zanu-PF women's league chairperson Angeline Muchemeyi said that Grace told them that there was no point for her fighting to be vice president, a lesser position, when she was already running State affairs.
Grace is currently the Zanu-PF women's league secretary, a position she has held since 2014.
"The First Lady said 'I'm the wife of the president, I'm the president already … I plan and do everything with the president, what more do I want, for now the position of the women boss is enough'," Muchemeyi was quoted as saying.

Friday, December 11, 2015

Be Wary of Unbridled Ambitions – Mugabe Warns Party Leaders

Transcript President Robert Gabriel Mugabe's speech to the Central Committee at the ongoing 15th National People's Conference yesterday.







*President Robert Mugabe 
Cde Vice President and Second Secretary Emmerson Mnangagwa,
Cde Vice President and Second Secretary Phelekezela Mphoko,
The Secretary for Administration Cde Ignatius Chombo,
All Politburo members, and members of the Central Committee here present.
Ladies and gentlemen, Comrades and friends
May I welcome you all to the 15th National People's Conference's Central Committee meeting, which we are holding after our Politburo on Monday.
Comrades, as we meet today, all our departments have been hard at work mobilising people and other resources towards this year's annual people's conference.
We thank the party leadership in Matabeleland North for taking the lead and all the other provincial leaderships for co-operating closely with the host province. We all realise that the responsibility for ensuring an effective conference falls on all of us especially those of us in leadership at various levels of the party. Matabeleland North deserves all our support especially given the background on drought which has affected most of the country.
Cdes, we meet today as the Central Committee to review the party's performance in the year about to end, the year 2015. We are happy to note that there is ample evidence that the party is getting stronger and stronger by the day. What with the resounding victories that we have been scoring in all the recent by-elections. I want to say congratulations.
Those by-elections have been key to testing the strength of the party from the point of view of its membership, the efficacy of its organs, rules and mobilisation strategies and we can say for now, anyway, and I hope for the future also, for now we rule the roost and I hope we do so in the future.
We have gained foothold, nay embedded ourselves, in those areas hitherto perceived as the domain of the opposition. However, we should never allow complacency to set in. We must remain on our toes, remain on the road with meetings taking place in different parts of the country every week.
While credit for the good image and standing of the party is shared by all of us, allow me to single out the Women's League and the Commissariat for working tirelessly in mobilising and keeping the party alive. That is as it should be and should be all the time.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Robert Mugabe Prepares For Lavish 91st Birthday Celebrations

Zimbabwe’s president and guests to enjoy a $1m party at a luxury golf course amid widespread child malnutrition and high unemployment
















President Robert Mugabe enjoys his 85th birthday
cake in in 2009 
(Pix: Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters)


John F Kennedy being serenaded by Marilyn Monroe apart, most presidents tend to make their birthdays private, low-key affairs. Not Robert Mugabe. Year after year the leader of Zimbabwe holds a lavish celebration, regardless of the state of the economy, and his 91st birthday will be no different. 
There will be music, dancing and elephant meat on the menu as an estimated 20,000 guests gather on a luxury golf course near Victoria Falls for a jamboree set to cost at least $1m (£650,000). Opposition MPs have branded the feast obscene in a country where the UN says one in three children are stunted because of hunger.