Financial Gazette (Harare)
6 December 2008
Zanu PF is mulling postponing its national people's conference in Bindura, Mashonaland Central, to a later date due to the cholera epidemic blighting the country.
Party insiders said ZANU-PF was worried the disease could wreak havoc among the more than 4,000 delegates expected to attend the indaba.
More than $500 quadrillion has been raised for the conference, in addition to over 200 cattle, goats, chickens and other livestock.
It was not immediately clear whether the conference would eventually be held after the subsiding of the cholera outbreak, which has claimed nearly 500 lives.
The Financial Gazette reported last week that the agenda for the conference had been agreed on and that the issue of succession had been excluded from the agenda.
This newspaper can also exclusively reveal that the suspended former ZANU-PF provincial chairpersons linked to the Tsholotsho Debacle of 2004 will have to start rebuilding their political careers from the cell level before aspiring for senior party positions.
This latest decision by the politburo, the party's supreme decision-making body outside congress, meant officials such as Mike Madiro, who was two weeks ago elected chairman of Manicaland province, would have to step down.
The decision also affected former Matabeleland North provincial chairman, Jacob Mundenda, who was barred from contesting the provincial party elections after the national political commissar, Elliot Manyika, informed officials that suspended officials needed to rise from the lower structures of the party.
Meanwhile, a ZANU-PF commission of inquiry into the state of the party in Bulawayo has implicated former provincial chairman McClaude Tshawe in the political machinations to revive the old PF ZAPU. Tshawe did not seek re-election in the ZANU-PF provincial elections held at the weekend.
Bulawayo has been rocked by factionalism with former PF ZAPU cadres alleging that they were being sidelined in the united ZANU-PF, hence the need to revive the old PF ZAPU.
A three-member commission consisting of politburo member Eunice Sandi and central committee members Callistus Ndlovu and Abednigo Nyathi produced an eight-page report that is still to be presented before the Bulawayo District Coordinating Committee.
The inquiry came about after disgruntled ZANU-PF members organised a rally at White City Stadium allegedly to announce the revival of PF ZAPU in the presence of Vice President Joseph Msika who had been invited to give a keynote address.
However, Msika did not attend the rally after allegedly being informed of the political machinations of the people behind the rally.
"But, could any reasonable person expect anything constructive to come out of such a rally to discuss such contentious issues in an open rally; which even non-ZANU-PF members could attend? As it turned out the majority of the people who attended the so-called rally were non-ZANU-PF members who did not disguise their hostility towards ZANU-PF and anything that represented the party," reads a section of the commission's findings.
"People seeking admission into the venue of the rally (White City Stadium) wearing ZANU-PF regalia were taunted and ridiculed. ZANU-PF posters on buses hired to carry people were ripped off and insults hurled at anybody who made ZANU-PF slogans. The atmosphere at the rally was palpably anti-ZANU-PF, " it added.
Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, the Minister of Information and Publicity and a high-ranking ZANU-PF official in Bulawayo, confirmed the report of the commission was out.
Ndlovu, however, said he was not in a position to discuss the report. "We have to wait for it to be submitted to the district coordinating committee. I can't discuss its content now," he said.
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We know why Zanu PF has postponed its conference its because they were looking at looting internationally donated food. Manje yarasa vanhu vakuketa.
Ngavadye isu tichifa nenzara.