Mugabe losing his grip?

p.
Zanu (PF) – and Mugabe in particular – denies the ruling party is in limbo over the contentious succession issue but has attempted to stifle public debate over the subject in a bid to portray a united front.
In the latest feuding over policy direction among senior officials, State Security and Land Reform Minister Didymus Mutasa – widely seen as a Mugabe confidante – said Harare would not allocate farms to former white farmers despite receiving more than 200 applications to take up farming again.
“We are taking land from white people and the same white people are applying for land,” Mutasa said. “So which land are they applying for? They are putting us in a difficult position,” he added, in an interview with ZimOnline last week.
But Mutasa’s statement was in sharp contrast with his junior, Flora Buka, Minister of State for Special Affairs responsible for Land, Land Reform and Resettlement, who a few days earlier had told an agriculture conference in South Africa that Harare was considering allocating some former white commercial farmers land to resume operations.
Analysts said while factions battle for control, the country’s economy continued to haemorrhage, inflicting more misery on a population grappling with the world’s highest inflation rate above 1 000 percent, shortages of hard cash, fuel, food, electricity and water.
“(Things) should be seen in the context of the succession battle raging in Zanu (PF) where factions are positioning themselves in the hope that Mugabe will go after his term, but the economy suffers in the process because no one is effectively in control,” said John Makumbe, a political science lecture and strong Mugabe critic.
In yet another case of one department of the government contradicting the other, police last week resumed arresting business executives for increasing prices without official authority, a direct defiance to Vice President Joice Mujuru who had assured industrialists that there would be no more such arrests.
It is not clear on whose orders the police are acting especially after Industry and Trade Minister Obert Mpofu publicly stated that his department which has previously ordered such arrests had not sanctioned the latest crackdown on businesses.
And last month, Anti-Corruption Minister Paul Mangwana promised a crackdown on government and political heavyweights for looting the state steelworks ZISCOSTEEL but immediately made an about turn saying he could no longer find a parliamentary report in his possession.
“We have a situation in which if someone from the two political camps makes a policy pronouncement, the other group will feel aggrieved and will counter that so as not to give an advantage to the other,” Makumbe said. “This has resulted in a policy gridlock and the situation is now desperate,” he added. – ZimOnline