EXPELLED former Zanu PF secretary for administration, Didymus Mutasa, wrote to President Robert Mugabe shortly before he was booted out of the ruling party, pleading with the veteran politician to stop taking sides with either of the party’s warring factions and rein in his “divisive” wife, Grace.
CHARLES LAITON/ EVERSON MUSHAVA
Part of the letter, dated January 26, reads: “We implore you as the only person with legal standing in the party to attend to this critical matter with the utmost urgency that it deserves.
“Contrary to expectations that Your Excellency would intervene objectively and restore sanity; you ominously joined the fray and became judge and juror, over all and sundry,” Mutasa wrote.
Mutasa revealed that he wrote the letter after Mugabe asked all disgruntled Zanu PF members to seek internal recourse before taking party matters to court.
The former Headlands MP said after Mugabe ignored his pleas, he then filed a court challenge seeking nullification of the party’s congress resolution. In the application he cited Zanu PF, Mugabe and party spokesperson, Simon Khaya Moyo as respondents.
In his letter, Mutasa pleaded with Mugabe to rein in Grace, whom he labelled as divisive.
“Events in the period prior to, during, and after that congress, have resulted in the forced removal of constitutionally elected leaders in nine out of 10 provinces, at all levels of the party structures, and in all wings of the party, namely, the main wing, the women’s league and the youth league,” he said.
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Mutasa claimed that after Mugabe took sides, all hell broke loose leading to a massive purge of party members believed to be sympathetic to former Vice-President Joice Mujuru.
“Resultantly, ‘votes of no confidence’ that were both un-procedural and unconstitutional, waged by rented crowds, were instigated to remove elected leadership throughout the whole country,” he said.
“The nomination process for central committee positions was fraught with intimidation, threats of violence, violence, repression and as such, in no way, could it have been free, fair and constitutional.
“Constitutional amendments were railroaded before the congress in direct contravention of the constitutional provisions that regulate such amendments, in particular article 30 of the party constitution read with section 253.”
Mutasa claimed that politburo and central committee meetings immediately preceding that congress were clouded with threats, fear and total failure to express individual opinion.
