President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party was plunged into turmoil when a minister and another senior official resigned from their positions in the party’s women’s wing on Wednesday amid infighting over the nonagenarian’s leader failure to groom a successor in his 37 years in power.
Two distinct camps have emerged in Zimbabwe’s revolutionary party as the factions seek to outwit each other in the race to succeed the 93 year-old leader. Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa is allegedly leading a faction that is angling to succeed Mugabe calling itself “Team Lacoste” while another grouping made up of young Turks, commonly known as Generation 40 and backing First Lady Grace Mugabe to succeed her ageing husband, wants to torpedo Mnangagwa’s presidential ambitions.
Although both Mnangagwa and the First Lady have publicly denied harbouring presidential ambitions, the ructions in the revolutionary party have now become synonymous in Zanu-PF politics.
Zanu PF national spokesperson Simon Khaya Moyo announced late last night that Bulawayo Provincial Affairs Minister Eunice Sandi Moyo and Sarah Mahoka had tendered their resignations from their positions in the Women’s League after party supporters accused them of undermining the First Lady as well as abusing party funds.
Moyo and Mahoka were the Women’s League’s deputy secretary for women’s affairs and finance secretary, respectively.
“The Politburo was informed that Comrades Sandi-Moyo and Sarah Mahoka were facing similar misdemeanors and had tendered their resignations from their positions in the Women’s League. As per the Women’s League recommendations on the two and their subsequent resignations, the Politburo accepted the same,” Khaya Moyo told journalists on the sidelines of a meeting of the Politburo.
Khaya Moyo said the duo’s resignation was clear testimony that they committed the offences adding that: “they have to pay back the funds they abused to the Women’s League.”
However, some sources in the Women’s League said the duo was targeted after they began to openly question the First Lady’s political ambitions during meetings of the Women’s League.
The resignation of Sandi Moyo meant that President Mugabe might decide to replace her as provincial affairs minister for Bulawayo although she has denied the allegations being leveled against her.
Her co-accused, Mahoka, was yet to make a public statement.
