Dabengwa: I never wanted to join Zanu PF

Dabengwa: I never wanted to join Zanu PF

RED RUSSIAN: Dabengwa joined Makoni at a campaign rally in Bulawayo three weeks ago

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By Torby Chimhashu

FORMER Home Affairs Minister and ex-Zipra intelligence supremo, Dumiso Dabengwa, has claimed he was not comfortable with joining Zanu PF and did so under pressure when ZAPU joined the ruling party following the signing of the Unity Accord in 1987.

“I was reluctant to join Zanu PF. I have never been comfortable and am still not comfortable. I told Nkomo [Joshua, former vice president] that the name Zanu PF was provocative to me,” Dabengwa told journalists in Harare Wednesday where he was a guest during the Quill Speak.

Dabengwa spoke as President Robert Mugabe, on the campaign trail in Matabeleland, accused him of the "greatest betrayal" for dumping Zanu PF to support Simba Makoni's bid for the presidency.

He said when he was freed from Chikurubi Maximum Prison where he had spent four years and 10 months on treason charges -- for which he was found not guilty -- he had set his eyes on doing something else outside politics.

“Nkomo lectured me on the need to join Zanu PF. But I still insisted that I was not comfortable with that. He said there was nothing in a name. He even game me the example of a horse and donkey mating and asked what would be the product to which I said it would be a mew not a horse or donkey. Then this is when he said what’s in a name,” Dabengwa said. “This is when I finally gave in and participated, but under protest.”

Nicknamed the Black Russian during the war of liberation, the former Zipra intelligence chief revealed that he had turned down Zanu PF during his time at Chikurubi when it first sent Emmerson Mnangagwa, Enos Nkala and the late Eddison Zvobgo to coerce him into joining the ruling party so that he could gain his freedom.

Said Dabengwa: “They offered to release me if I took a Zanu PF card. I was angry. I almost took a chair and hit someone who had said that.”

He said President Robert Mugabe had betrayed the struggle by reneging on what was agreed on by both Zanla and Zipra cadres who became united before independence on the understanding that they would come under one patriotic front with one leader.

Dabengwa said both Zapu and Zanu PF had put structures that would put an interim leadership to lead the Patriotic Front (PF) during the elections.

“We all agreed that we would fight in the election as PF not Zanu PF or PF Zapu. Some greedy somebody went to register as Zanu PF. That to us was the biggest betrayal. Someone had decided to pursue their selfish interest,” Dabengwa said as he explained the issues surrounding his incarceration and later the Unity Accord.

He said the 1987 agreement was just a compromise and it is the reason why Zanu PF lost elections to the opposition MDC in 2002 and to date in the Matabaleland region.

He said: “People in Matabeleland and my colleagues in Zapu told me that we were wearing a wrong jacket and had indeed sold out. Of course it is true that both the Gukurahundi massacres and the Unity Accord angered the people of Matabeleland.

“There were so many disparities in the Unity Accord. We have tried to have them resolved but nothing has come out of it."

Dabengwa was jailed by Mugabe at the height of what is now commonly known as Gukurahundi, an army operation in the Midlands and Matabeleland which human rights groups say left 20 000 innocent people dead, many of them Nkomo's supporters.

Although Mugabe has apologised for the "moment of madness", the electorate in the region continues to reject him wholesale at elections.

However, Dabengwa said he would not push for a Mugabe trial “because he entered into a truce with Joshua Nkomo”.

“I am not bitter. I have said I forgive but do not forget even up to this day. I am not comfortable with Zanu PF but it does not mean bitterness,” said Dabengwa.

Makoni, a former finance minister, is challenging President Robert Mugabe in elections on March 29. Analysts predict a closely-fought race with opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.
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