DEFENCE Minister Emerson Mnangagwa appeared to suggest Zanu PF would not hand over power, specifically to its biggest rival, the MDC, if it lost elections as that would be tantamount to “failing departed comrades” of the 1970s war of independence from white minority rule.
Mnangagwa accused the MDC of doing the bidding of hostile Western countries, calling it a “puppet political party”.
“Let me point out clearly that this country came at a very huge price that we cannot allow it to slip back into the hands of neo-imperialists,” Mnangagwa told a Zanu PF rally in Chivi, according to the state-run Herald newspaper. “We can’t fail those departed comrades who shed their blood to see a prosperous Zimbabwe.”
Suggesting western countries intent on President Robert Mugabe’s overthrow were employing the MDC as a local proxy, Mnangagwa stormed: “So let it be clear to those who have imposed illegal sanctions on us that sanctions or no sanctions, Zimbabwe will never be a colony again.
“The MDC is not a people-driven party — it is directed from somewhere.”
Mnangagwa’s thinly-veiled threats will crank up the temperatures in the already troubled power sharing government between Mugabe’s Zanu PF party and the two rival MDC factions led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Primne Minister Arthur Mutambara.
Mugabe has said he wants elections next year to end the power sharing “nonsense”, and already the MDC is concerned that the army – which remains firmly in the President’s control – could be used in a brutal crackdown in a throwback to the June 2008 presidential ballot which Tsvangirai boycotted after 200 of his supporters were allegedly killed.