The editing of Mugabe’s interview — to maintain a veil of secrecy on his views on the succession debate and aspiring candidates — resulted in the removal of what would have been a valuable insight into the president’s thinking.

In the original interview — two-and-a-half hours long before being edited to an hour for broadcasting — Mugabe bares his soul on the succession wrangles and makes hitherto undisclosed views.

Those who attended the interview said Mugabe spoke candidly about the issue, referring to leading succession candidates Vice-President Joice Mujuru and her rival Emmerson Mnangagwa. Mugabe is said to have referred for the first time to the "Mujuru side" — meaning the Zanu PF faction led by retired army commander Solomon Mujuru and the camp led by Mnangagwa in ways never disclosed before.

Mugabe made veiled attacks on Joice Mujuru, virtually accusing her of plotting with former Zanu PF secretary-general Edgar Tekere and prominent publisher Ibbo Mandaza to use Tekere’s autobiography, A Lifetime of Struggle, to undermine him while in the process promoting her presidential bid.

Mugabe’s spokesman George Charamba yesterday said there was nothing unusual about the editing of the president’s interview. "As the president’s press secretary, I’m more than satisfied that the drift of the president’s message was achieved," Charamba said. "I’m also satisfied that the ZBH board is within its rights to delete, retain, or postpone or archive any material they would have got from the interviewee, that is the essence of journalism."

In the ZBC interview Mugabe suggests Tekere was being used by Mandaza, the publisher and editor of the book, and the Mujuru faction, to damage him for political ends.

"The Tekere/Mandaza issue, ah they are trying to campaign for Mujuru using the book…you can’t become a president by using a biography. Manje vairasa (they have lost the plot). They don’t realise they have done her more harm than good," Mugabe is captured as saying in the censored parts of the interview.

"Now, I thought people would, if they want to campaign, fine,campaign in the provinces. The machinery is not biographies; the people who vote for us are ordinary people of Zimbabwe. We have a congress that will decide. It is those people who will decide and I thought this is the way we would go about things, not the Mandaza way."

Mandaza this week refused to comment, saying: "I have neither watched nor read Mugabe’s interview."

Mugabe suggests Mujuru’s ambitions to succeed him have been "ruined" by her associating with people on a campaign to denigrate him.

Tekere’s book portrays Mugabe as a reluctant leader who rose to power through political coups and detention-camp plots. It also says some of his leading comrades during the war viewed him as a "sell-out".

Mugabe has been angered by the book. He has publicly attacked Tekere about it and also complained during a Zanu PF politburo meeting on January 31. The politburo resolved to expel Tekere who was only readmitted to the party in April last year after his dismissal in 1988. While Mugabe dents Mujuru’s ambitions in the ZBC interview, he shores up Mnangagwa by speaking about him in glowing terms. Mugabe says there are people who think he supports Mnangagwa, but he does not.

Mugabe goes on to narrate Mnangagwa’s political case-history dating back to the early years of the liberation struggle; how Mnangagwa was sentenced to death by the Rhodesian regime after he tried to sabotage a train and how he was spared execution and later deported to Zambia because he was deemed under-age, 16 years old.

Mugabe further relates how Mnangagwa later in Mozambique became Zanu’s chief of intelligence, replacing Cletus Chigowe who was in 1978 together with Henry Hamadziripi, Rugare Gumbo, Crispen Mandizvidza and Zivavarwe Muparuri, implicated in an attempted coup against the Zanu leadership.

Sources said the ZBC management felt the interview in its original form would get the public broadcaster embroiled in messy Zanu PF faction politics. Senior ZBC staff had different views on the issue.

Some wanted Mugabe censored to protect their own camp’s political interests, while others wanted his remarks fully televised to advance their group’s agenda. - Zimbabwe Independent