HARARE – Traditional leaders will continue to support Zanu PF and are ready to be taken to court for their defiance, the President of the Chiefs Council, Chief Fortune Charumbira, said on Friday.

Justice Clement Phiri of the Harare High Court earlier this year ordered Charumbira to withdraw a public statement that traditional leaders would support Emmerson Mnangagwa, the Zanu PF presidential candidate, in general elections held on July 30.

The judge said Charumbira’s remarks made on October 28, 2017 and on January 13, 2018, were a violation of the Constitution of Zimbabwe which says traditional leaders must be apolitical.

Speaking during the ongoing Zanu PF annual conference in Esigodini, Chief Charumbira declared: “The problem is that some in the audience are nervous. They were actually saying, ‘chiefs, why don’t you leave politics’ and I said ‘no, chiefs are doing their job.’

“Those in Zanu PF must not be more nervous than the chiefs themselves when we’re working with you. Some of you are nervous and are actually discouraging the chiefs … We will not stop coming. Those who want to go to court, we’ll meet in court. Zanu PF is the party of chiefs.”

MDC spokesman Jacob Mafume said last night: “What Chief Charumbira is saying is in contempt of court. It is pointless bravado that brought Robert Mugabe to the brink and that will bring Emmerson Mnangagwa to the brink faster than anyone can imagine.

“It’s uneducated and uncontrolled arrogance that precedes a fall. It doesn’t help the traditional leaders’ cause nor the Zanu PF cause that the head of chiefs can be blatantly partisan in violation of the constitution.

“If he had wanted to play a respectable role he should have gone there, if he had to, to raise the concerns of his subjects, and the subjects of many chiefs, who are suffering from the economic collapse.”

In his judgment which found Charumbira offside, Justice Phiri ruled: “The remarks made by Chief Charumbira on October 28, 2017, on the occasion of the annual conference of the Council of Chiefs and on January 13, 2018, to the effect that traditional leaders have been supporting and must continue to support Zanu PF and its presidential candidate at the forthcoming 2018 elections be and is, hereby, declared to be in contravention of the Constitution of Zimbabwe.

“Chief Charumbira be and is, hereby, ordered to retract in writing the statements that he made to the effect that traditional leaders should support and vote for Zanu PF by issuing a countermanding statement and shall publish the countermanding statement in a newspaper with a national circulation and endeavour to make a statement available to private and public media houses and the national broadcaster within seven days of being served with this order.”

Charumbira defied the judge’s orders and is yet to retract his comments.

Local Government Minister July Moyo was also ordered to institute disciplinary proceedings against Charumbira, but that order too was ignored.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has described his government as a new dispensation breaking from Zimbabwe’s authoritarian and lawless past. Critics argue little, if anything, has changed.