Jonathan Moyo demoted

Jonathan Moyo demoted

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By David Blair

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe spurned one of his most ardent followers last Saturday when Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe's information minister and scourge of the free press, was suddenly demoted.

In a capricious display of presidential power, Mugabe abruptly dropped Moyo from the ruling Zanu-PF party's central committee and publicly reprimanded his subordinate.

Moyo was accused of plotting against Joyce Mujuru, a veteran ally of Mugabe who became Zimbabwe's new vice-president on Saturday. The president seized the opportunity to deliver a calculated rebuff to an increasingly erratic and unpopular minister whose main role is to vilify the regime's opponents and wreck Zimbabwe's free media.

The state press, which Moyo once ruled with a rod of iron, made a point of reporting his demotion. "Jonathan Moyo failed to make it into the central committee despite being earlier elected by Matabeleland North province," said the Sunday Mail, an official weekly.

Moyo remains a member of the cabinet and politburo but the 240-strong central committee is Zanu-PF's main policy-making body.

Once a vociferous critic of the president, Moyo turned full circle and won his cabinet job in July 2000 by doing everything possible to please his master. He pushed through the notorious Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which crippled Zimbabwe's independent press by forcing all journalists to register with a state media commission.

Any journalist working without official permission now risks two years in jail. These requirements caused the closure of the Daily News, Zimbabwe's only independent daily, and led to the arrest of scores of journalists.

But Moyo, 47, believed that all privately owned newspapers were conspiring with Britain to overthrow Mugabe and return Zimbabwe to colonial rule. In a single article written in January 2001, Moyo accused the Daily News of "corrupting our moral values", compromising "our national interest", putting "our heroic troops at risk", making "deplorable and nauseating claims", displaying "rank madness" and denigrating "anything and everything that is nationalistic, Zimbabwean or African".

His unquestioning devotion to Mugabe perhaps stems from the fact that he was a latecomer to Zanu-PF's cause. Moyo played no part in the war against white Rhodesia, lasting only six weeks in a guerrilla training camp in Tanzania. Wilfred Mhanda, the camp's commander, later called him the "first successful deserter of the struggle".

During the 1980s and 1990s, Moyo collected overseas scholarships, studying variously at the University of Southern California, San Francisco University and Stanford. As late as 1999, he was still criticising Mugabe, writing of the president's habit of "shooting himself in the foot".

When Moyo landed his cabinet position, he had to prove his loyalty. He did so by attacking Mr Mugabe's critics with abandon and simply denying any facts that were inconvenient.

But he could not resist using the state media to fashion a personality cult around himself. A report in The Chronicle, an official daily, of a visit he paid to Bulawayo praised his "mesmerising glamour".

Mugabe might have seen Moyo's self-glorification as a challenge to his authority. The president has now taken his revenge.
Daily Telegraph
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