Media briefing exposes Mnangagwa

By Luke Tamborinyoka

Early this week on Monday at 9 am, Emmerson Mnangagwa hosted selected media editors at State house at a choreographed event specifically designed for him to publicly reiterate his lie that he is a constitutionalist, all in a desperate quest to douse the raging party flames by the rival Zanu PF military faction that wants him to go now.

Deputy Chief secretary (Communications) in the Office of the President and Cabinet George Charamba, himself an acolyte of the military faction but who must be seen to be doing his job of defending ED, deliberately staged the media editors’ event to give Mnangagwa a platform to push back the military faction’s call that is being fronted by one Blessed Geza who has sonorously called Mnangagwa to order for using proxies to push for the unconstitutional extension of his term to 2030.

At the choreographed event on Monday, Mnangagwa feebly reiterated his call that he is a constitutionalist and will not go beyond his constitutionally prescribed term limit.

However, Mnangagwa dismally failed to show his sincerity.
Trabablas failed in absolute terms to use the event to unequivocally order the halting of the motion in Parliament and to stop the Politburo members who are all over the country exhorting party structures to support this unconstitutional Presidential term extension.

Instead, Monday’s platform exposed Mnangagwa as insincere and as a liar who is wont to double-speak and (un) strategic ambiguity by indicating left when he apparently wants to turn right.

If Mnangagwa were sincere, as the first secretary of the party, he was supposed to use Monday’s event to publicly call for an immediate stop to all these televised party party events across the party districts exhorting all party structures to support the unconstitutional extension of his term.

He did not do this but was instead flimsy and indecisive about the whole sordid saga, preferring only to say he will “persuade” his persuaders not to do so.

Asked specifically on whether he would extend his term if asked to do so, Mnangagwa, in his own feeble attempt at dishing out a clever polemic to the gathered editors, said he would persuade his persuaders not to persuade him to act in breach of the Constitution.

For God’s sake, a sincere and constitutional leader of a party that is on the verge of doing something unconstitutional does not have to persuade anyone!.

The leader simply has to stop the Constitutional breach by publicly halting, with immediate effect, all these assemblages of unconstitutionality that are being convened by senior party leaders across the country.

Mnangagwa also failed to use the platform, to speak robustly against high-scale avarice and graft and to distance himself from the barons of corruption, the so-called zvigananda, to use his deputy Army General (Rtd) Constantino Chiwenga’s war-time diction.

Curiously, Mnangagwa was openly hostile to the question of Wicknell Chivayo being his front.

He first feigned a look at the upper front of his body, pretending to take the word “front” literally, before tellingly saying to the questioner that Chivayo was using his own money.

Mnangagwa then upped his defence of the ex-convict by protectively and insulatively describing Chivayo as a philanthropist.

On the same day, Chivayo was braggingly telling the public on his X account that through his Father Christmas shenanigans, he was not only singing for his supper but for his breakfast and lunch as well.

It was very clear to whom he was singing and Mnangagwa dismally failed to use Monday’s event to shake himself off Chivayo’s antics by mellowly couching him as a self-made philanthropist.

This week, I give just five reasons that show that Mnangagwa was lying and was not being honest on his word that he was a Constitutionalist who did not want his term extended:

1. Failure to blast members of his party calling for term extension
   As stated earlier, Mnangagwa showed his insincerity by failing to use Monday’s event to publicly chastise and call to order Ziyambi Ziyambi and other Politburo members by ordering them to immediately stop exhorting party members across the party districts to support an unconstitutional misadventure.

He should have also publicly called on Energy Mutodi to halt his mischievous motion in Parliament.

Tellingly, he did neither but instead softly and euphemistically chose to describe these merchants of unconstitutionality as mere “persuaders.”

1. The ZBC’s tell-tale double messaging
   On the same day that the ZBC beamed live Mnangagwa’s State House event where ED said he was a Constitutionalist and would not extend his term, the same ZBC, in the same news clip on the same day, had a rider streaming across the bulletin informing viewers that all was set for the Constitutional amendment seeking to extend the President’s term to sail through.

This was unhelpful to ED’s intended message and grossly exposed his insincerity.

?Luke Tamborinyoka is a local journalist now based in the UK, and former spokesman for the late prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai