Mugabe flexes muscles to extend his tenure

By Frank Chikowore

President Robert Mugabe’s succession squabbles within his ruling Zanu PF party prompted Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo to drop Tendai Savanhu from the commission running the affairs of the City of Harare , The Zimbabwe Times has established.
The sources said Chombo was acting on instructions from the head of state who is flexing his political muscles to extend his term of office by a further two years to 2010.
Mugabe’s latest antics to weed out his critics occupying key positions as demonstrated by Chombo, according to top Zanu PF officials, are ploys to force the party’s Central Committee to endorse proposals extending his hold on power.
“Savanhu is a member of the Central Committee. He is also a member of the (Zanu PF) Harare Province and it is a public secret that the provincial committee refused to endorse the proposal to extend the President’s term. Through Chombo’s actions, the President Mugabe wants to whip Savanhu into line before the Central Committee sits to review the resolutions made at the (Zanu PF) Annual People’s Conference in Goromonzi”, said a politburo member who requested not to be named.
The Goromonzi conference referred the proposal to extend Mugabe’s term to 2010 to the party’s Central Committee for scrutiny but the party organ is yet to make a decision.
Before being dropped by the minister last week, Savanhu was deputizing the re-appointed chairperson of the commission, Sekesayi Makwavarara – herself a political turncoat who got to Town House on an MDC ticket and later crossed the floor to join the ruling party.
“His (Savanhu’s) sacking from the Harare Commission is only a tip of the iceberg. Several heads are going to roll in our party’s structures as we prepare for our congress. The President is targeting all those who vehemently opposed the extension of his term during consultations before the conference in Goromonzi”, said one of the party’s Central Committee members.
But Chombo said he was acting in the best interests of Harare ’s ratepayers.
“As the responsible minister, I looked at who is capable of delivering and who is not. So at the end of the day I came up with a team that I believe will move the City of Harare forward. Political motives are neither here nor there”, said the minister before switching off his mobile phone.
Meanwhile, Mugabe reportedly quizzed Mashonaland East Governor and Resident Minister, Ray Kaukonde, over his utterances at the Goromonzi meeting where he told delegates that “yava nguva yekutaurirana chokwadi (Its time to be open with each other), things are not normal in the country economically”.
The sources said this statement provoked the ire of Mugabe who reportedly felt his power base was under siege.
“With a number of people within the party being viewed as potential candidates to succeed him, President Mugabe was really not happy with the governor (Kaukonde) and ended up summoning him for an explanation of his utterances. Kaukonde is being viewed as the front-man in the Mujuru camp and the President knows it and he is worried that Mujuru is being diplomatic in his approach to the succession saga at the same time pulling the strings from a distance”.
The sources said if the Central Committee does not approve proposals to extend the head of state’s tenure, Mugabe – who turns 83 in February this year – is contemplating calling for an extra-ordinary party congress before the expiry of his current term that would seek to endorse him as Zanu PF’s presidential candidate in 2008.
Zanu PF holds its congresses after every five years and the next one is penciled for December 2009. The congress elects the party’s presidium. Sources said Mugabe is now already pushing for congressional re-election after realizing that several figures within the rank and file of his party are against a constitutional amendment that would keep him in office a little bit longer.
“Mugabe wants to be in power for as long as it takes because he fears that he would be targeted by the international community for human rights violations. The Gukurahundi massacres are a thing that the old man is worried about, especially after the execution of Saddam Hussein who was viewed by the world superpowers ( Britain and the United States ) as a despot. This is why he is not happy with the bill that Jonathan Moyo wants to table before parliament”, said one source adding that Mugabe has ordered his party’s legislators to reject the bill when it is brought to the House of Assembly for debate.
Documented evidence suggests that more than 20 000 people were killed during the disturbances by the North Korean trained Five Brigade in Matabeleland and Midlands regions in the mid 1980s.
But Mugabe maintains that the Unity Accord of 1987, signed between Zanu PF and PF Zapu, marked the amicable resolution of the tribal conflict.
Mugabe’s spokesman George Charamba could not be reached for comment while Zanu PF spokesman Nathan Shamuyarira said “there are no problems in Zanu PF” emanating from the succession issue.