Speaking to Newsreel on Tuesday Chamisa scoffed at the announcement
saying; It's unacceptable, it's going to be resisted and rejected
because it does not make any sense. In fact at the heart of the ICT
Ministry is the communications sector.' The Kuwadzana MP said he was
not part of Mugabe's government but a member of a coalition government,
composed of 3 political parties. He said Mugabe used to have the power
to re-assign ministries under the old constitution (Section 31 D) but
the GPA had changed that, to ensure such decisions have to be made by
all three political party leaders – Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara
and Mugabe himself.
Chamisa has fingered Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba, who allegedly
used to write as Nathaniel Manheru in the Herald, as being one of the
key architects behind the plot to trim his ministry. He said it was all
about personal hatred and jealousy. When the negotiations were done
they were no faces or names attached to a particular ministry. There
wasn't a problem. The problem arose when they began to see certain
faces they were not happy with. This is why you see this knee-jerk
reaction,' Chamisa said. The young legislator has had several clashes
with Charamba over the role of his ministry and says it unfortunate his
colleagues are resorting to using the Herald as a propaganda tool to
settle arguments.
But does Charamba have the power to influence Mugabe in a matter like
this? Only last week blogger Denford Magora wrote an article entitled
-The three men who run the Zimbabwe government,' and said these were
George Charamba, Misheck Sibanda (Secretary to the President and
Cabinet) and Mariyawanda Nzuwa, the head of the Civil Service
Commission. Magora said Mugabe was insulated from public opinion and
relied heavily on daily briefings from Charamba. The daily briefings
he gets from Charamba, and the opinion and advice that is shared
between them, has made Charamba Mugabe’s ears and eyes on the
administrative side of government,' Magora wrote.
Chamisa told us the plot started with Information, Media and Publicity
Minister Webster Shamu trying to encroach into his ministry and take
control of the telecoms companies. But when this failed the plotters
pushed Mugabe to intervene and make it look like he was arbitrating a
dispute between two ministers and giving control to another ministry as
a solution. Even the Herald, thought to be still controlled by
Charamba, gave the game away with the headline Confusion over
Ministries cleared.'
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has meanwhile issued a statement
declaring Mugabe's re-assigning of ministerial mandates as null and
void'. This does not only fly in the face of the letter and spirit of
the Global Political Agreement but is also an illegality as the GPA has
legal effect', he said. Tsvangirai argued that the allocation of
mandates to ministries came into effect via a process of negotiation
involving the three political parties and as such no one party to that
negotiating process can unilaterally alter such mandates without
effecting the due process of negotiation'. He said such violations to
suit individuals were a cause for concern'.
Unilateral decisions from Mugabe however are not new. Even before the
unity agreement he unilaterally gazetted the allocation of influential
ministries to his ZANU PF party and refused to back down. The agreement
was eventually signed using that same allocation. His next move was to
announce new ministerial permanent secretaries, without consulting his
coalition partners. Meanwhile political prisoners remain in remand
prison on cooked up charges while several ZANU PF cronies continue to
disrupt operations on white owned commercial farms. It's unclear
whether the MDC will be able to block this determination to hold on to
power, from the man they defeated in elections last year, and several
quarters are now calling for them to pull out of the unity government.
SWRadio Africa
Post published in: News