PRESIDENTIAL spokesperson, George Charamba has accused Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo of seeking to sneak his “personal tiff” with Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa, which began in 2004, into a “national and succession issue”, as part of a plot to undercut the latter’s ambitions to succeed President Robert Mugabe.
BY BLESSED MHLANGA
Charamba, who has been revealed as the author of an acerbic Herald column under the pseudonym, Nathaniel Manheru, claims in his latest instalment that Moyo’s fallout with Mnangagwa dates back to the 2004 Tsholotsho Declaration, where the latter led a campaign, which would have seen the Mnangagwa appointed Vice-President ahead of his predecessor, Joice Mujuru.
“You have a personal tiff with this or that politician — your erstwhile ally in some past ventures — yet you seek to globalise that highly individual tiff; seek to make it a national issue,” Manheru wrote.
“How and why were you allies in the past, how and why are you enemies in the present?
“Who asks: by what dimension does your tiff become national?
“Of national purport or concern?
“Need we then wonder why the political discourse in the run-up to elections is so poor, so sparse, with no apparent relief in sight? Inane, factually inaccurate postulates are credited with profound wonderment?”
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Moyo was fired from Zanu PF following the infamous Tsholotsho Declaration, where he was alleged to be at the centre of a plot to propel Mnangagwa to the Vice-Presidency ahead of Mujuru.
Manheru said Moyo should realise that he was a Zanu PF politburo member and a minister by appointment and had no basis to pretend to speak on national issues.
“You are an appointee in your party; you have no constituency, yet you think your viewpoint carries decisive weight in settling great questions of the day in your party! How so? Who asks: by what authority?” Manheru continued.
In a more direct attack on Moyo, another State media columnist, Bishop Lazurus on Sunday asked the Higher Education minister to explain why and how he had lost faith in Mnangagwa, whom he fronted in 2004.
“Watching and listening from where I was, I kept asking myself: ‘Is this the same Prof Moyo, who was fired from Zanu PF in 2004 following the Tsholotsho saga, where he was accused of being the architect of the plot to smuggle VP Mnangagwa into power?’ That Mnangagwa that the professor thought could lead the country in 2004, isn’t he still the same? What exactly has changed? Is it VP Mnangagwa, who has changed or it’s the professor?” the columnist wrote.
Moyo yesterday shot back at Charamba, saying he had usurped the column from the usual writer, whom he identified as Munyaradzi Huni.
“Charamba, oops Bishop Lazarus, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: My support for Mnangagwa in 2004 was wrong,” he tweeted.
Moyo described Charamba as “an ideological bankrupt and discredited wordsmith bidding for a discredited and cruel politician”.
There’s no love lost between Moyo and Charamba, as they have been publicly trading insults for years now.
Moyo has all but been frozen out of State media, which Charamba controls, and has found his voice on Twitter, where he does not suffer fools gladly.
