Former VP Joice Mujuru
Auxilia Katongomara and Nqobile Tshili Chronicle Reporter
JOICE Mujuru is fated for political grief in her newly expressed bid to challenge for the presidency of the country, Zanu-PF said yesterday. Mujuru, spitted out by Zanu-PF last year and later dropped as Vice President by President Robert Mugabe over accusations of illegal manouvres to grab power, yesterday took up space in two newspapers to publish a policy document titled Blueprint to Unlock Investment and Leverage for Development (Build).
This was read as a signal that she intends to contest in the 2018 Presidential election. Yesterday, Zanu-PF was dismissive of her “Zanu People First” political project, and her chances of winning the presidency from the revolutionary party. Zanu-PF national commissar Cde Saviour Kasukuwere described Mujuru’s “manifesto” as a non-event by a political failure.
“It’s ill-informed and convincingly careless. It’s a non-event. She doesn’t have the pedigree to contest against Zanu-PF,” said Cde Kasukuwere. Zanu-PF politburo member Professor Jonathan Moyo, commenting on Twitter, said Mujuru and her mooted political project were replicating MDC-T failures.
“Zanu-PF will never produce such an anti-Zimbabwe and treacherous document against land reform and indigenisation. Gamatox has stolen a failed MDC-T manifesto with indigenisation and land reform as the targets,” said Prof Moyo, referencing a term which came to be associated with Mujuru and other leaders thrown out of the party for causing disunity ahead of the party’s congress last December.
Mujuru’s manifesto made hypocritical sentiments that the land reform was chaotic, only because she is now on the other side of the fence. She has previously hailed President Mugabe for championing the State take-over of vast tracts of land held by a few white commercial farmers for distribution to millions of landless blacks.
Zanu-PF politburo member Cde Christopher Mutsvangwa said Mujuru had now officially joined prominent political failures who left the revolutionary party to form ill-fated projects.
“People First is the latest futile, ill-fated project to try to derail the Zanu-PF revolutionary agenda that is steeped in the epic struggle of its iconic leader President Mugabe,” Cde Mutsvangwa blasted.
“The anti-people forces who have spent 35 years trying to unseat Mugabe and Zanu-PF are latching onto the fake war heroics of Joice Mujuru. This will never wash with a politically astute Zimbabwean populace which has seen through every stratagem of the post-Rhodesian enemies and their like-minded ilk of detractors and local puppets.”
He said Mujuru must not be blinkered into believing that Zimbabweans want to be led by people who lack principle.
Cde Mutsvangwa said the People First project will fail like other political parties that tried unsuccessfully to remove Zanu-PF from power. “People First will sure come to naught just as did the United African National Council (led by the late Bishop Abel Muzoriwa), Zimbabwe Unity Movement (led by the late Edgar Tekere), Mavambo (led by Simba Makoni) and the fissure-plagued MDC political hydra,” said Cde Mutsvangwa.
In her two paged policy document Mujuru said she will review the Indigenisation Act in a move which will likely derail government’s black empowerment efforts.
Mujuru also says “all persons who call Zimbabwe home shall be entitled to access land”, prompting Prof Moyo to ask: “Which people first? Looters? Anyone who calls Zimbabwe home?”