HIGHER Education minister Jonathan Moyo has once again rubbished government’s Command Agriculture programme, which he labelled as “Command Ugly-Culture”, claiming Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa had hijacked and corrupted it.
BY RICHARD CHIDZA
“VP Mnangagwa’s Command Ugly-Culture, disguised as Command Agriculture, is a corruption of a noble objective and is, thus, totally unacceptable!” Moyo said in a tweet at the weekend.
“The noble objectives of Command Agriculture, first enunciated by Dr Grace Mugabe, have been corrupted by VP Mnangagwa into an Ugly-Culture!”
This was after President Robert Mugabe, for the second time on Friday, disclosed that the Command Agriculture scheme was the brain child of his wife, First Lady Grace Mugabe.
“It was First Lady (Grace)’s idea and she approached Vice-President (Emmerson) Mnangagwa and they decided to help our farmers, grouping them around water sources like dams. We then christened it Command Agriculture,” Mugabe told cheering supporters at Sakubva Stadium in Mutare on Friday.
“It is our programme and we came together on this. It has been enhanced by the abundant rains. We provided our farmers with seed, fertilizer and equipment. It has saved us. Now we have a bumper harvest.”
But Moyo, whose disdain for the programme that he associates with Mnangagwa is a matter of public record, once again derided the scheme, claiming it had been “hijacked” .
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Moyo, who in 2004 reportedly organised the infamous Dinyane Secondary School’s Tsholotsho Declaration meant to catapult Mnangagwa to the Vice-Presidency ahead of former Vice-President Joice Mujuru, has turned around to be the Vice-President’s greatest adversary in the ongoing Zanu PF succession fights.
The Tsholotsho Declaration refers to a clandestine meeting organised by Moyo’s then faction loyal to Mnangagwa in 2004 to plot Zanu PF’s succession.
Under the scheme, Mnangagwa would assume the Vice-Presidency and eventually the leadership of Zanu PF and the country.
The meeting was held ahead of a key Zanu PF congress in 2004.
Moyo is now seen as the brains behind a faction of the ruling party known as G40, which is bitterly opposed to Mnangagwa’s bid to take over from Mugabe, who turns 94 next February.
Two weeks ago, Moyo told a public discussion forum in Harare that Mnangagwa and his acolytes wanted to push a command system of governance down the throats of Zimbabweans.
He has previously characterised the Command Agriculture programme as a communist type of policy aimed at militarising society.
