Zimbabwe’s murky politics

Who dunnit?

One of the country’s grand old gunmen dies in an unexplained fire

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Readers' comments



@Jose Carlos Costa

"---What about elections within ZANU-PF? SADC is to complacent with old man Mugabe! He came to Luanda this week for the SADC summit and everybody showing him the respect he doesn't deserve. Someone must stand up and say "that's enough!". How does a single man dares to risk the future of an entire nation because he doesn't accept that everything comes to an end?----"

SADC is a voluntary organization, it has no powers to dictate to any of its members. Which is why you see noone say much against the way Angola is ruled and how its oil income is unfairly distributed. Nor does anyone command South Africa to make the lives of its Black citizens better than they were under apartheid (economy wise) and stop letting the privileged whites in that country determine the day to day national agenda.

Mugabe does not refuse anything, he is where he is because of the majority wishes of ZANU. If ZANU decides today they no longer want to be led by him, that will be it. However, on the contrary, ZANU supporters appear to want to deny nature and have Mugabe lead them forever!! Inspite of what you have read, he IS that popular within his party.

You mention that Mugabe "--risks his nations future---". Nothing could be further from the truth. That little old man has created, and is in the process of enhancing the BRIGHTEST future yet to come to Zimbabwe! He is creating a real middle class amoung Africans with his land reform and economic indigenization programs.
No other African country is close to initiating such an ambitious and much-delayed goal.

Most nations are still mired in the fog of FDI driven economics, an illusion that many will soon realize neither creates sufficient jobs nor caters for much else besides the foreign corporations that invest the FDI in the first place.


I am forever indebted to the General for his role in liberating us from colonialism. For an uneducated fellow with such a heavy stutter, I am amazed at how he still managed to outsmart apartheid Rhodesia and continue to command respect from his troops. With such a heavy stutter, you would think he would quickly loose people's attention, but NO!

His second greatest success became the spectacularly disciplined integration of the Rhodie soldiers and the Liberation guerillas into one of the best armies in Africa.

As a point of correction, General Mujuru was in charge of the army during the gukurahundi civil war. Mnangagwa was the minister of Security (the CIO). The brigade blamed for atrocities, the Fifth Brigade, was under Mujuru's Army not Mnangagwa's CIO.

Ever since the West changed sides, from being strong participants, trainers and suppliers of military equipment to help crush the gukurahundi Dissident uprising, to now being antagonists, using gukurahundi as a stick against Mugabe, they have tried hard to separate General Mujuru from the alleged crimes.

To read media reports today, one would never realize the West was so heavily involved in encouring Mugabe to crush the dissident uprising! The british sent military trainers, the Americans maintained government funding, allowing for Mugabe to allocate more into the war effort and most western media encouraged a news blackout which was broken once by The Observor. The editor there was immediately fired under pressure from Thatcher and Tiny Rowland (talk about freem of press!!)

Mujuru is constantly exornerated from alleged gukurahundi crimes because the West was hoping to use him to advance their agenda thru the MDC. How does a General who leads an army be "clean" when a minister who leads a different security branch be "guilty" in a civil war? And, yes, gukurahundi was a civil war, not a tribal massacre as the media potrays.

Many in ZANU know that after retirement from the army, General Mujuru became one of the most voracious capitalists in the country. He had his hand in almost all facets of the country's economy, Needless to mention, he found fellow travellers in western capital and soon cemented ties there.

This is how he became leader of a faction in ZANU that is affectionately refered to as "moderaates" in the western press. A faction which now conspired with western embassies to undermine ZANU from within, collaborated with the opposition, encouraging voters in regions they controlled to vote against Mugabe and encouraging breakouts that result in Makoni and Dabengwa forming their own parties to siphon votes from Mugabe and weaken ZANU.

ZANU has cleverly dealt with Mujuru's passing, encouraging people to celebrate his liberation credentials while pretending not to notice his betrayal of the national agenda in the last years of his life. They are very smart in this. They don't need to expose his later-day duplicity. He is gone and there is noone else with similar liberation pedigree to continue his wayward ways.

While the initial reaction to Mujuru's passing is sadness within ZANU, in the long-run, this death will result in a much stronger party. Mujuru's faction is now going to dissolve due to lack of a strong replacement. As the opportunists most of them were under Mujuru, they will now see their opportunity with being the loudest accolytes of Mugabe or whonever he will choose to succeed him.

The opposition has lost their only hope for worming into the military structure. They and their western handlers had been hoping that Mujuru would help them divide the army in a way that benefits them. This will now not happen and the chances of the MDC ever coming to power, even if they were to miraculously win the vote (a highly unlikely event for a foreign-funded puppet party), the army would simply deny them the right on the basis of protecting national security from a Manchurian party doing the bidding for foreign governments and corporations.


@ newsell: Mnangagwa oversaw the massacres, not Mujuru. First hand accounts from victims indicate that the regular army, over which Mujuru presided, were not involved in the war ZANU PF conducted against its unarmed civilians; this war was conducted by a North Korean trained brigade that fell outside the reporting structures of the regular army, and which was subsequently disbanded.

More broadly, I tend to agree with you though. They all deserve a fiery end, preferably in perpetuity.


Aaah with all the spoils now either destroyed or divided amongst themselves.... they finally start turning on each other!

I'm going to enjoy this unravelling.




This article gives no specific details of the fire (so probably the journalist concerned has no details). I am not convinced Mrs Mujuru´s political rivals will benefit by eliminating her husband. Among the article´s various speculations it fails to speculate on what proportion of murders are committed by close relatives or non-political acquaintances. And I get the impression that Mrs Mujuru will use her husband´s death as an opportunity to make political capital by attempting to inculpate her rivals. There may be no guilty party, but that would not make an interesting report, would it ? I would prefer to read information about the everyday difficulties of ordinary Zimbabweans, the tragedy without the paranoia, for a change.


@Newsell: it's Mnangagwa who oversaw the Matabeleland massacres, rather than Mujuru. It looks as if justice will never be served for that episode, with nearly 30 years having passed and no-one indicted for crimes against humanity - too late for the Hague to act.


"As Mr Mugabe’s state security minister in the early 1980s, he oversaw the Matabeleland massacres, when as many as 20,000 people were killed."

Justice was served....eventually. Wonder what happened to the farmer and the family he "displaced"?



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