ZIMBABWE First Lady Grace Mugabe on Wednesday confronted under siege Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa at a tense Zanu PF politburo over claims he was recently poisoned at the party’s youth interface rally in Gwanda.

This comes as senior ruling party officials said Mnangagwa failed to respond to a series of damaging allegations made against him by Zanu PF politburo member Jonathan Moyo, who is also Higher and Tertiary Education minister, at their last meeting on July 19.

On Wednesday, Grace grilled Mnangagwa over why he had kept quiet until last Thursday when his supporters and social media activists claimed he was poisoned by state actors or the Mugabe family through ice-cream from the debt-ridden business Alpha Omega Dairy (Pvt) Ltd.

“Grace confronted Mnangagwa over the poison issue; she demanded to know why the vice-president had kept quiet for a long time when social media activists and his supporters suggested he was poisoned purportedly by the First Family or his colleagues (Defence minister Sydney Sekeramayi and Health minister David Parirenyatwa),” a senior politburo member said.

 “She also said Mnangagwa failed to rein in his allies and has also not come out clean up to this day in public on whether he was poisoned or not. Mnangagwa did not answer her directly, but disowned his supporters and basically threw them under the bus, hence the expulsions, demotions and suspensions.”

The biggest casualty was Mnangagwa’s most vocal supporter — Energy Mutodi — who was expelled for claiming Sekeramayi poisoned the vice-president. independent