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NewsDay

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Mnangagwa must avoid capture by tainted opportunists

Opinion & Analysis
FORMER Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa officially assumes his duties as President today. He carries a heavy load of expectations on his shoulders as the nation looks up to him for many things.

FORMER Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa officially assumes his duties as President today. He carries a heavy load of expectations on his shoulders as the nation looks up to him for many things.

They expect him to bring back democracy, sanitise the political landscape and, most of all, to rejuvenate the economy which has been on a free-fall for nearly four decades. The nation and indeed the international community at large wait with bated breath for the enunciation of his policy preferences and the kind of government he envisages to establish.

Perhaps, the major challenge Mnangagwa will have to deal with is that of balancing Zanu PF’s exclusivity preferences against public demand for inclusivity. We believe the Western world, which has expressed hope after the turn of political events in Zimbabwe, remains keen to work with the new government — hopefully an all-inclusive establishment.

What is likely to present headaches to the incoming President — if he is really going to chart a new path as he has promised — is how he is going to manage a bunch of power-mongers and political vultures who have already encircled him to hijack his cause and, and no doubt, to lead the ship astray.

Given the sequence of events from the Saturday solidarity march to Mnangagwa’s welcome rally on Wednesday attended by actors and sympathisers from across the political divide, it’s clear Mnangagwa is on the verge of capture by these political opportunists. It’s ironic that these same people now occupying the front seats with the once-despised Mnangagwa were yesterday gleefully popping up champagne celebrating his fall after he was fired by former President Robert Mugabe two weeks ago.

What the actions of these players have shown is that they do not have the interests of the population at heart, but will dance to whatever political tune is playing and will blow in whatever direction the political wind is going. Their interest is to remain in the political limelight and to safeguard their ill-gotten wealth amassed during Mugabe’s era.

The speed at which many of these political turncoats and opportunists have switched sides in the past few days is a clear demonstration that they are determined to hide their criminal past in the new dispensation by controlling the new frontier. Many of them quickly surrounded Mnangagwa soon after his arrival as if they had been fighting from his corner while he was being persecuted and made a political spectacle at the interface rallies driven by former First Lady Grace Mugabe and her many acolytes.

It is our hope that Mnangagwa will be discerning enough to sniff out such characters and ensure that they do not influence his policy decisions.

He must keep them away from the new, hopefully, inclusive political establishment whose main task will be taking this great country into the bright future that it deserves. It must be demonstrated in no uncertain terms that the era of Mugabe-ism is gone and that all those that had sustained that rotten system do not contaminate the new establishment.

Clearly, these shady characters have shown that the interests of the people of Zimbabwe are far from their hearts.