HARARE – Vice President Constantino Chiwenga is not a shoo-in to be Zanu PF’s next leader when President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s second and final term ends in 2028, according to party spokesman Christopher Mutsvangwa.
Mutsvangwa also denied the existence of a pact between Mnangagwa and Chiwenga, that the latter would succeed him after they seized power through a military coup in November 2017.
Mnangagwa also cannot endorse anyone to succeed him, Mutsvangwa said in an interview published on Sunday, because “Zanu PF is not a church where people can be anointed, and the president is not the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury who anoint priests.”
“If you think you’re worth it, go and sell yourself to the people. If you clamour for anointment by the president, it means you have failed the litmus test of being a Zanu PF leader,” Mutsvangwa told The Standard.
“Zanu PF is not a secret society and there is no secret agreement on succession. People are going to vote their leaders from the grassroots level.”
Mutsvangwa is reported to quietly harbour ambitions to be the party’s next leader, and his pointed comments criticising Chiwenga’s apparent advantage in the race to be the party’s next leader will put him on a collision course with the vice president’s allies.
Mutsvangwa also accused Chiwenga, a retired general, of being a reluctant participant in the 2017 coup that ousted former President Robert Mugabe.
“Some of us were very involved in this thing in 2017,” he said, “We know where the allegiances of each and every person lay at that particular time but we don’t mention it.”
He appeared to suggest that Chiwenga held a secret meeting with Mugabe while the coup was in progress as he wavered on whether to see it through.
“Everyone who goes into politics and has ambitions to be a leader must pay by the rules, especially of a revolutionary democratic party,” Mutsvangwa said. “Zanu PF is not Makandiwa’s church where he can have himself, his wife and his kids and his followers and say this is my church. President Mnangagwa is an elected leader of a revolutionary democratic party, there is no godly anointment in Zanu PF.”
Mutsvangwa said even if Mnangagwa were to endorse Chiwenga as his successor, this would be resisted.
He railed: “You want to become a leader by induction, like a magnet saying ‘because I am a piece of iron I must also be magnetised by the president?’ Even if the president said there is a secret agreement, we would censor him.
“That’s why the president was very clear on his tenure. He cleansed himself. Why, when he has done his job very well as a democrat, would he choose to exit by donating the seat to someone else?”
Mnangagwa’s supporters have been urging him to extend his term beyond the two-term constitutional limit, but he insisted earlier this month that he would retire when his second and final term ends.
Zanu PF last held its elective congress in December 2022 and the next one is due in 2027 when Mnangagwa’s successor is likely to emerge.
The military plays a major role in Zanu PF internal politics and could still make a decisive intervention in support of its favoured candidate.
