Under-fire Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo has escalated his attacks against Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF supporters who are known by the moniker Team Lacoste, bluntly accusing them again of working to push President Robert Mugabe out of power.
In his no-holds barred assault on Mnangagwa as he addressed the media in Bulawayo on Friday, Moyo described the VP as a “successionist” and accused the Midlands godfather of allegedly organising a “well-orchestrated” plot to have the minister arrested, as Team Lacoste viewed him as a stumbling block to their efforts to have Mnangagwa take over from Mugabe.
However, Moyo — who has repeatedly taken the war to Team Lacoste over the past year — said the efforts of these “successionists”, who allegedly included Mnangagwa himself, former Cabinet minister and war veterans leader Christopher Mutsvangwa and defence forces commander Constantino Chiwenga, would fail dismally.
The sharp-tongued minister, who has also himself come under fierce attack from Team Lacoste, especially over the past few months, also claimed provocatively that Zanu PF had only had two factions — the Mnangagwa camp and the group that paid allegiance to former Vice President Joice Mujuru.
“The Mujuru faction has transformed into a political party while the Mnangagwa faction remains within the party, but still in its traditional successionist mode and buoyed by the transformation of the Mujuru faction into a political party.
“Within Zanu PF, successionists arrogantly assert that they are entitled to power, entitled to rule and entitled to the country’s resources because they fought and ‘died’ for these things.
“They don’t care about the Constitution and the people. They are particularly anti-elections as they believe that … Mugabe should just pass the baton on to them,” Moyo charged.
He also postulated that it was often the case that rabid successionists were those people who would have walked with their leader for a long time, and thus used their long association or history with the leader as a basis for their sense of entitlement.
“They say we come a long way with the president and so it’s now our turn to take over from him. They say they are entitled to take over from him and they don’t care what the Constitution says or what the people want or may choose at an election.
“The ideology of entitlement makes successionists anti-youth. They see the youth or young people as enemies standing between them and the power they want to grab through unconstitutional and undemocratic means.
There is no way young people or the mafikizolos (johnny-come-latelies) can be successionists. Young people are loyal to the leader and the legacy of the founding leaders. Where successionists see themselves as the embodiments of the liberation struggle, loyalists see the Constitution as the embodiment of the values and ideals of the liberation struggle.
“Successionists will die but the Constitution is permanent and inter-generational. Young people are the most likely to carry on the values and ideals of the liberation struggle as enshrined in Section 3(i) of the Constitution,” Moyo thundered further.
This comes as the politburo member, said to be a key member of the Generation 40 (G40) group — Zanu PF Young Turks who are rabidly opposed to Mnangagwa taking over from Mugabe — has in recent months been fighting allegations that he abused Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund (Zimdef) funds, charges he says are being instigated by Mnangagwa and his supporters. Moyo has since threatened to sue Mnangagwa and other senior Zanu PF bigwigs for allegedly abusing their offices and trying to nail him through the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (Zacc) and State media. He has already sued Zimpapers — publishers of The Herald, the Sunday Mail, the Chronicle and the Sunday News — in this regard.
“I will fight to the end. These are not the Dark Ages, this is 2016 … no, no. Some of us work very, very hard and what they did (trying to arrest him) was also designed to derail the STEM programme because you know you go to Zanu PF headquarters and they are there downstairs. When you come down, they want to arrest you … They are at your office, they are at your house, they are at Parliament.
“That is why we end up asking them why don’t you do the same with people who stole the $15 billion (in unaccounted for diamond revenue),” he said.
“You are trying to make me like Chidumo, that dangerous criminal, sending 10, 15, 20 people to arrest me. I will fight to the end. This time they have played with the wrong character.
“You don’t do such things and expect to get away with it. I have 100 percent faith in the judiciary of this country … magistrate courts, High Court, Supreme Court and Constitutional Court. The reason why these people do not win and have successful prosecution is because they just do political things,” Moyo said.
“We have very careless, unprofessional people who are prepared to do scandalous things to support people who think they are entitled to certain offices and they are being prevented from taking those offices by the shadows they see. They are prepared to do scandalous things,” he added.