Fake stories, dubious sites and gutter journalism in the aftermath of abandoned Zanu PF primaries in Kwekwe

In the aftermath of the chaotic scenes which characterised last Sunday’s aborted Zanu PF primary elections for Kwekwe Central constituency, a collection of poorly packaged writings guised as ‘news articles’ from ghost writers quoting unknown sources have found their way on social media.

The fierce intra-party contest pitting 26-year old Energy ‘Dhala’ Ncube and cleric Kandros Mugabe was abandoned last Sunday after youths aligned to the former beseeched the ruling party’s district headquarters in Kwekwe, arguing that the latter had bribed the presiding officers handling the explosive electoral contest cancelled amid chaos.

In the ensuing drama and chaos, several Zanu PF provincial leaders had their vehicles damaged while they scurried for cover from the rampaging pro-Dhala backers.

Several Zanu PF youths aligned to Dhala, who include Kwekwe Central constituency’s late MP Masango Matambanadzo’s bodyguard Burden Mawire, have since been arrested and were yesterday denied bail at the magistrates court.

Dhala is also the nephew of state security minister, Owen Ncube.

A Zanu PF youth, MacDenias Moyo, who is also a personal assistant to Mugabe, accuses the Dhala camp of employing dirty tactics such as coming up with poorly packaged ‘stories’ in its ‘desperate bid to control the narrative’.

Moyo said the articles, some of which have been published on some bogus news sites and social networking platforms such as WhatsApp, smack of ‘gutter journalism’.

He accuses the ghost ‘journalists’ of disrespectfully attacking senior Zanu PF leaders in their articles, including the party’s national political commissar, Victor Matemadanda.

“These articles arikunyorwa pachidofo dofo. The desperation to control the narrative is glaring. Vabata mazita akawanda kubva kuna National PC vatisingataure navo kuzvika kuneni zvangu munhu asina basa (the poorly written articles have been indiscriminately attacking right about everybody, from (Matemadanda) to low-ranking members such as myself),” said Moyo.

He added:

“Party business should always prevail over personal differences and if Dhala had won our camp would totally rally behind him to ensure that ZANU PF wins the seat unlike what was done in 2018 where we saw some of our comrades running with an independent candidate”.

In the 2018 harmonised elections, Mugabe made his debut attempt to wrestle the seat from the opposition.

He lost to the late Matambanadzo and trailed third behind former MP Blessing Chebundo of the MDC.

“We are one people in the party and those who carried out acts of violence on Sunday are clearly not ZANU PF but just agents of violence that were bused in clearly for that purpose only,” Moyo added.

Prior to the chaos on Sunday, the Dhala camp had been accused of having bussed supporters from Gokwe to vote in the party primaries aimed at coming up with the sole Zanu PF candidate to contest in the forthcoming by-elections for Kwekwe Central.

The Kwekwe Central seat fell vacant following the death of National Patriotic Front MP Matambanadzo, in July.

While Matemadanda was not picking up calls from this reporter during the time of writing, Zanu PF provincial chairperson for the Midlands, Engineer Daniel McKenzie Ncube told Zwnews that the fate of the abandoned Kwekwe central primary elections were going to be decided after a report on the chaotic polls is tabled before the Politburo.

Zwnews