Despite his wife’s snub, Robert Mugabe chatted with Joice Mujuru, as he walked along Harare International Airport’s red carpet – possibly an indication that it is business as usual between Bob and his 2nd in command.
Grace then addressed another rally where, this time, she did not speak obliquely, but bluntly called for Mujuru to resign.
Mugabe was, again, nowhere near the scene, as he was conveniently officiating at the graduation ceremony of H.I.T. On the president’s schedule for the week was an important politburo meeting, at which the matter of factionalism was high on the agenda. As the politburo meeting drew nearer, Emmerson Mnangagwa found himself – accidentally or on purpose, who knows – in a collision with a Parirenyatwa Hospital staff bus.
Cyber commentators went into frenzy, with allegations that the VP’s faction was behind the ‘accident.’ But the prevailing opinion – which this publication neither supports nor opposes – is that this was a self-inflicted injury, intended to discredit Mujuru. If this was indeed a ‘selfie’ on the minister’s part, then he must badly want the country’s top job, because not many men would deliberately wreck that German work of art called the Mercedes Benz.
When the day of the politburo meeting finally arrived, it turned out to be one gigantic anticlimax, after Zesa – genuinely or by some devious plot – plunged most of Harare into darkness. After the power cut, journalists who were in attendance expected to hear the drone of a backup generator and to see the lights come back on. But shock, horror, there was not one generator to be found and not even one of those ubiquitous $15 solar lanterns, among that assembly of millionaires.
Post published in: Analysis