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Things Fall Apart, renowned Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe uses William Butler Yeats’ poem as an epigraph, describing the chaos that arises when a system collapses.
Elias Mambo
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed,” reads the poem.
In invoking these lines, Achebe refers to both the imminent collapse of the African traditional systems, threatened by the rise of imperialist bureaucracies and the imminent disintegration of the British Empire.
The theme can also be used to aptly describe what is happening in Zanu PF which is mired in turmoil as the battle to succeed the soon to be 90 years old President Robert Mugabe boils over, with party heavyweights publicly clashing in unprecedented fashion in the acrimonious power struggle.
So brutal has been the fight that it has spilled into the state media, given to singing Zanu PF’s praises, as reported faction leaders Vice-President Joice Mujuru and Justice minister Emmerson Mnangagwa battle to strategically position themselves to succeed Mugabe ahead of next year’s elective congress.
Analysts say the open clashes over the chaotic Zanu PF provincial elections pitting Mujuru against Mnangagwa at the recent politburo and central committee meetings and the public clashes between Mugabe’s spokesperson George Charamba with Information minister Jonathan Moyo on the one hand and Zanu PF secretary for administration Didymus Mutasa and party spokesperson Rugare Gumbo on the other —themselves a manifestation of the broader factionalism in the party — showed the centre was beginning to crumble amid looming heightened chaos that could accompany the denouement Mugabe’s long rule.
Zanu PF officials have been slamming each other in public and even attempts to invoke Mugabe’s name as the “final executive authority” in Zanu PF has not struck the usual fear in the hearts of senior party officials. Mutasa and Gumbo have openly contested Charamba’s version of events that results of the recent Mashonaland Central provincial elections are still not final pending a meeting of the politburo.
The Zanu PF politburo is going to have an extraordinary meeting tomorrow to deal with chaos unleashed by the hotly contested and disputed provincial elections in Manicaland, Midlands and Mashonaland Central provinces. The elections were marred by accusations of vote-buying, disenfranchisement and ballot-rigging — the very same allegations which have bedevilled Zimbabwe’s national elections mainly since 2000.
The Mujuru and Mnangagwa factions are fighting for control of provincial structures crucial in the battle to determine Mugabe’s successor. Provincial structures will play a pivotal role in choosing members of the presidium at the December 2014 elective congress. The two however insist they do not lead any factions even though it is actually common cause within their party that they actually do.
In a scathing editorial attack apparently on the Mujuru faction that won the controversial polls in the Midlands, Manicaland and Mashonaland Central provinces, state-controlled daily The Herald, now apparently mired in the factional battles, gave the clearest indication yet daggers are drawn in Zanu PF.
“On Saturday (tomorrow), Zanu PF needs to look itself in the mirror, warts and all. The party must act on the warts that threaten to make it politically ugly. The self-deprecating habit of pretending all is well when the house is on fire must be dropped like a plague, for fire once teased snarls all the way to ash,” the Herald said in a Tuesday front page editorial which shocked many Zanu PF officials and its readers alike.
“There are some in Zanu PF who didn’t want the chaos that ravaged provincial elections in the Midlands, Manicaland and Mashonaland Central exposed. They wanted the allegations of rigging and irregularities, the shambolic party registers and disenfranchisement of hundreds of party supporters to be hidden behind mouth-washed platitudes. But we are not in the business of public relations. Our duty is to educate, inform and entertain our readers.”