PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa has re-arranged the musical chairs within his party’s politburo in a surprise move which has been viewed as an attempt to deal with the thorny succession issue that could burn the party ahead of the 2028 polls.
In a brief statement read out by the Zanu PF secretary-general Obert Mpofu, Mnangagwa removed Mike Bimha from the political commissar post, but kept him as a politburo member and replaced him with Munyaradzi Machacha who joins the politburo from the Chitepo School of Ideology where he was the principal.
Bimha has suffered the same fate as his predecessor Engelbert Rugeje, while Patrick Chinamasa was moved from being the party treasurer general to being the secretary of legal affairs in what could be a swap deal with Jacob Mudenda, who previously held the position.
Speaking after the statement, party spokesperson Christopher Mutsvangwa, however, said succession was the least on Mnangagwa or Zanu PF’s agenda, telling journalists that there is no talk of replacing his boss.
“I want to repeat, the President has just won an election, last year in August, he won a term for five years, the next election is 2028. Right now he is occupied in fulfilling the mandate of the manifesto of the past election which he is doing excellently in many ways than one.
“These are the issues that are preoccupying our President not this wish to compress four, five years of an election into a succession issue right now. Succession is not the primary purposes of why he was elected, he was elected for building the mandate of prosperity,” Mutsvangwa said.
In the past weeks Zanu PF has appeared to be pushing an agenda to tinker with the Constitution and keep Mnangagwa in office past his constitutional mandated term.
Party slogans, songs and utterances have all pointed to a plot that appears to have been behind the politiburo reshuffle, but Mutsvangwa said for now there is no such plan.
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“If the President wants anything he comes and brings it to this building, to his politburo, to his central committee and eventually to his congress, that’s what the President does. We have not discussed that issue at that level so we have no reason to fan flames of something which is not on the agenda of the party,” Mutsvangwa said.
The late night announcement, however, appeared to spare Mutsvangwa who is in the eye of the storm after he hit at colleagues in Zanu PF saying they were behind the arrest of his son.
Mutsvangwa said he was not under fire from Mnangagwa or anyone in Zanu PF, saying he had survived before and will continue to survive.
“Do you see any flames around me, I am not under any fire, I am here, I am a son of the revolution and I will always be here,” he said.
Mutsvangwa was once sacked from the ruling party by the late former President Robert Mugabe, but bounced back and became instrumental in Mnangagwa’s takeover from Mugabe in 2017.
