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Zimbabwe: Mutinhiri Saga – When the Revolution Eats Own Children

WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.

Original Post Date: 2011-07-23 Time: 09:00:02  Posted By: News Poster

By Clemence Manyukwe
On Tuesday, ZANU-PF’s secretary for information and publicity, Rugare Gumbo, said the party’s Politburo would discuss Mutinhiri’s trials and tribulations, but on Thursday, he was singing a different tune saying the party’s powerful organ had no time to discuss political nonentities like her.

All of a sudden Mutinhiri has become a political nonentity and yet the same party had seconded her last year as Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Welfare in the inclusive government.

“What is Tracy Mutinhiri? She is a non event for the Politburo. She is just an ordinary card carrying member of the party and if she wants to join the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T), the Politburo will not be worried and the President will not be worried,” Gumbo said scornfully of a woman who has been continuously derided in public in recent weeks.

Since the formation of the inclusive government in 2009, Mutinhiri has been viewed by those in ZANU-PF as being too sympathetic to the MDC-T.

The cynicism against her reached a crescendo in March this year, following the re-election of the MDC-T’s chairperson, Lovemore Moyo, as Speaker of the House of Assembly amid allegations that two ZANU-PF lawmakers had voted against their own party.

Since then, the party’s Mashonaland East Province has displayed jaded negativity against her culminating in a recommendation to the Politburo that she be recalled from Parliament.

War veterans and the party’s youths have also made moves to dispossess her of her farm in Marondera.

Recent events point to a Mutinhiri who is on her way out of ZANU-PF.

Political analyst, John Makumbe, said it would be impossible for the politician to retain the right to represent ZANU-PF if sentiments by Gumbo are anything to go by.

“They will continue harassing her. The revolution is now eating its own children,” Makumbe said.

“I think she is on her way out. I think she will defect to the MDC-T, but she will do it at the right time. She will lose her farm and properties; that’s how ZANU-PF deals with those who defect.”

Should Mutinhiri defect, questions abound as to what would have motivated her.

There are strong possibilities that it maybe for spiritual reasons, for since she visited popular Nigerian evangelist, TB Joshua – by her own accounts, life has never been the same.

Appearing on the prophet’s television station, Emmanuel TV, the deputy minister said she had gone to the church to seek inner peace.

“I knew that God was saying something to me,” said Mutinhiri after a faith healing session, previously attended by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Zimbabwe Football Association boss, Cuthbert Dube, among other leading politicians on the African continent.

Ironically, Mutinhiri’s daughter, Vimbai, a contestant on reality competition, Big Brother Africa, has said the biggest personal advice she has ever received came from TB Joshua.

On Sunday, Vimbai, a holder of a Bachelor of Social Science degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, saved her countryman, a white Zimbabwean, Wendall, from eviction saying this would promote national unity as she was in that competition for a much bigger cause than herself.

But away from changes that have possibly been encountered on the road to Damascus, questions remain as to why the Politburo shied away from adopting the provincial recommendation to recall Mutinhiri.

Are there any legal hurdles in effecting the recommendation and can the persecuted politician sleep soundly now due to lack of action by the party’s supreme decision-making body?

Parliamentary expert, John Makamure, said the country’s laws provide for a party to recall any of its members, but it does not provide for any parliamentarian to cross the floor.

He added that the mechanism for legislators to dump their own party and join a rival grouping in Parliament, without any consequences, is currently under constitutional debate.

“We do not have the law for crossing the floor. It is one of the issues that have been brought up during the constitution-making process. But parties can decide that if any member does not act in their interest, they can request him or her to vacate his or her seat,” said Makamure.

But if two ZANU-PF politicians voted for Moyo, why is Mutinhiri the only one who is being hounded for that alleged act?

Margaret Dongo, another female politician who was hounded out of ZANU-PF in the 1990s, said she could not immediately comment as she was yet to scrutinise the case.

But, for a party that is forever steeped in history, the answer may be easy to find.

Born on June 25 1955, Mutinhiri does not have strong liberation war credentials.

Apart from claims that her parents fed freedom fighters and that she carried food for them, Mutinhiri only emerged as a committee member of a cell, ZANU-PF’s lowest structure named Kuwiriranagorira Branch in Ruwa in 1986; and before that she worked for Standard Chartered Bank; Anglo American Corporation and the United Nations Children’s Fund, among others, mainly as an administrative secretary.

Ambrose Mutinhiri, a retired army general and former minister of youth with whom the MP has three children and are divorced, is currently ZANU-PF’s lawmaker in the neighbouring Marondera West.

Original date published: 22 July 2011

Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201107230020.html?viewall=1