Mugabe set to announce politburo

Mugabe set to announce politburo

MOYO

• Chinotimba faces axe over Tsholotsho

• Chronicle deserts Moyo, says Daily News to return

• Moyo set for Zanu PF exit

• Jonathan Moyo dropped from Zanu PF central committee

• Moyo: A cancer Zanu PF cannot deal with

• Mugabe summons Chronicle editor

• What's the point of Joyce Mujuru?

• Mujuru: a worm in a fish pond

• The end is nigh for the President

• Mujuru sworn in as Zimbabwe's first female VP

• Mugabe silences retirement talk

• Mugabe reprimands his spin doctor

• Mugabe 'frightened' by own spin doctor

• Mugabe's own Joseph Goebbels

• Mnangagwa suffers crushing political defeat

• Mugabe says Zanu PF divided

• Mugabe wants female deputy

• Mnangagwa outsmarted in race for State House

• 'President Mnangagwa will be Zanu PF's Waterloo'

• Moyo clashes with Shamuyarira over Sky

• Nkomo declares war on 'saboteurs and infiltrators'

• Zanu PF editor at war with Moyo

• Mugabe's spin doctor eyes presidency

• Zanu PF at war over Mugabe's successor

By Staff Reporter

ZIMBABWE'S ruling Zanu PF will on Friday convene an extraordinary central committee meeting in Harare where President Robert Mugabe is expected to announce a new-look Soviet-style Politburo, among other business.

Jorum Gumbo, a senior member of the Zanu PF central committee and also the party's chief whip in Parliament, confirmed to the privately-owned Daily Mirror newspaper that Mugabe would most likely name the politburo members.

It has been said and not denied that President Mugabe and the rest of the presidium were playing their cards close to their chests to avoid splitting the party down the middle.

Already, fissures within the ruling party had become pronounced ahead of the just ended Zanu PF’s National People’s Congress as members drew lines and curled into camps. However, President Mugabe managed to diffuse the potentially explosive situation that threatened collapse of the party.

Speculation was rife in the highly enthusiastic central committee that a number of senior members who attended the unauthorised Tsholotsho meeting that threatened to effect “regime change” and topple the presidium led by President Mugabe, would be axed from the Politburo.

President Mugabe’s spin-doctor and “confidante” Information Minister Jonathan Moyo allegedly convened the unsanctioned meeting.

“There will be an extraordinary meeting in Harare on Friday. We have not yet received the agenda of the meeting although speculation is rife that President Mugabe will announce the new-look Politburo,” Gumbo told The Daily Mirror yesterday.

"As we gained the confidence and numbers of the ecstatic masses, we were infiltrated by a few termites, which began their long journey of burrowing through our core values of liberation, discipline, unity, respect and loyalty"

JOHN NKOMO

Zanu PF insiders told this newspaper that President Mugabe and his deputies – Joseph Msika and Joyce Mujuru – and national chairman John Nkomo, met at the party’s headquarters at the weekend and deliberated on possible politburo members.

President Mugabe deferred the appointment of heads and deputies of departments that constitute the politburo when the ruling party held its fourth all people’s congress in Harare a fortnight ago.

Among the leaders who attended the “unorthodox” meeting was Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa (secretary for legal affairs), who is said to have “apologised profusely to earn his keep”.

Six provincial chairpersons who also attended the meeting have since been suspended from the party for six months. War veterans’ leader Jabulani Sibanda was slapped with a four-year suspension.

During the Zanu PF congress, President Mugabe, Msika and Nkomo said the party would not hesitate to crack the whip on those bent on destroying the party.
Zanu PF’s mouthpiece, The Voice, this week quoted Nkomo saying: “The current fissures within the party are, therefore, reflective of the variegated nature of Zanu PF’s membership, and the costly compromises we made in order to unify the party and the nation.

“As we gained the confidence and numbers of the ecstatic masses, we were infiltrated by a few termites, which began their long journey of burrowing through our core values of liberation, discipline, unity, respect and loyalty,” Nkomo wrote.
Daily Mirror
JOIN THE DEBATE ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE NEWZIMBABWE.COM FORUMS
newsdesk@newzimbabwe.com