Chinese sanctions busting ploy

faction, the Mujuru faction and the Mugabe faction.
Obviously, Mugabe will deny that he leads a faction of Zanu(PF), preferring to continue to live under the illusion that he leads a united party that is loyal to him. Well, nothing can be further from the truth if recent developments are anything to go by.
The outbursts about there being no vacancies in the Zanu(PF) presidium late last year seem to have resulted in a backlash that Mugabe and some of his faction adherents had under-estimated. The resistance that has been generated by Mugabe’s attempt to extend his deplorable stranglehold on power to 2010 must have come to him as a shock.
In typical authoritarian style, Mugabe has now ordered the restructuring of the leadership in selected provinces known to be hostile to this latest project by the dictator. Elliot Manyika, the Minister without Portfolio has embarked on provincial visits with the primary objective of ensuring that elements that are opposed to Mugabe’s continued stay at State House do not get elected into the provincial executives of the beleaguered party. Incidentally, Manyika now has a deputy by the name of Nhara, who was appointed to that position recently.
Mugabe must be a bureaucratic joke. How do you appoint a Deputy Minister for a Minister without Portfolio? It does not make sense. Unless, of course, the “without portfolio” is a deceitful way of saying “Zanu(PF) Affairs”, as I have always maintained. Fortunately, the police have just arrested Nhara for alleged involvement in the widespread diamond looting that is devastating this nation. We wait to see whether the self-made Zanu(PF) spin-doctor will get away with this latest economic crime, given Gideon Gono’s numerous accusations against thieves and economic saboteurs in the midst of Zanu(PF) itself.
Begging bowl in hand, Mugabe last week took off to Namibia for a state visit. While he was there Grace Mugabe donated US$2000 cash to some school, much to the surprise of many Namibians. Normally such donations are made through cheques, but the Zimbabwean First Lady gave actual cash, but only$2000? Most Namibians are not aware that to a Zimbabwean, such money is a huge amount. On the parallel market it will be said that the First Lady donated Z$17 million – not to be sneezed at.
Impeccable sources in Namibia allege that the fuzzy agreement signed between that country and Zimbabwe was nothing but a Chinese sanctions busting ploy. They allege that when the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, passed through Namibia recently he left some money with instructions that it be passed onto Zimbabwe.
The electricity agreement was therefore a way of getting the Chinese money to Mugabe’s collapsing economy without implicating the Chinese who are anxious not to antagonise their lucrative trade partners in both the EU and the US. How can Namibia, which gets its electricity from South Africa’s Eskom, suddenly be capable of rehabilitating the Hwange Power station? Now we know.