Zanu PF Midlands province is planning to oust Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa from both his party and government positions.
Mnangagwa is said to be “running out of both rope and oxygen”.According to the Daily News the fed-up members said they had resolved that now was the time to move in for the kill.”Successionists (Zanu PF code for Mnangagwa faction) have caused enough damage in the party as seen in the Midlands fiasco of the past few weeks. The party cannot be allowed to crumble because of the misplaced ambitions of one man and his suicide bombers.”Because of this, comrades have resolved to campaign vigorously for a petition in all the party’s provinces calling for the ouster of Ngwena (Mnangagwa), as a way of ending the terrible fights and unnecessary confusion engulfing the party. We are now sick of it all,” a party official linked to the Generation 40 (G40) who are opposed to the VP said.

The G40 — who allegedly include Local Government minister Saviour Kasukuwere, Mugabe’s nephew and Indigenisation minister Patrick Zhuwao, and Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo among others — are said to enjoy the backing of Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko and influential First Lady Grace Mugabe.

n a move that puts paid to the premature celebrations of the past few days by Team Lacoste (Mnangagwa faction), following the acquittal at the weekend of the VP’s alleged allies on a litany of serious charges by a regional disciplinary committee, the three ministers at the heart of the saga have now moved to formally appeal for Mphoko’s intervention.

At the heart of the Midlands crisis, linked to the ruling party’s escalating succession wars, are claims by ministers Makhosini Hlongwane, Tapiwa Matangaidze and Annastancia Ndhlovu that they have been the victims of harassment by Gokwe Nembudziya legislator Justice Mayor Wadyajena, his Gokwe-Kana counterpart Owen Ncube and Midlands youth league secretary Edmore Samambwa.

But in a hotly-disputed verdict, the regional disciplinary committee, which was tasked by Kasukuwere to look into the ministers’ complaints — and which now stands accused of having been led by alleged allies of Mnangagwa, and of reaching “a decidedly factional” verdict — concluded that the ministers had failed to substantiate their claims.

A Zanu PF politburo member who claims that he is “non-aligned” in the ruling party’s seemingly-unstoppable factional and succession wars said it appeared that Mnangagwa was beginning to “run out of both rope and oxygen”.

“Like Mai Mujuru before him, there is an impression that he is beginning to run out of both rope and oxygen in the party, unless the president rescues him like now.

“Remember that the women’s league quota system demands within the presidium are also still hanging around his neck like the proverbial sword of Damocles,” the senior party official said.