‘Do not take us back to Mujuru era’

THE INTERVIEW Tichaona Zindoga

The issue of one centre of power in zanu-pf has bobbed to the surface once again after Mashonaland Central Province made a controversial resolution calling for party vice presidents to be elected, a prerogative that reposed with President Mugabe since 2014. Our Political Editor Tichaona Zindoga caught up with constitutional expert and zanu-pf deputy secretary for Legal Affairs Cde Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana (PM) — who was part of the legal team that amended the zanu-pf constitution to provide for the One Centre of Power principle two years ago — to discuss the issue.TZ: What is the background of the concept and what would the election of vice presidents imply on the power and authority of President Mugabe and the constitution of the party in general?

PM: Let me begin by giving this whole issue of one centre of power its historical context, from 1984 right up to 2014, Vice Presidents were elected. The only four positions which were directly elected by the people which is the Presidium, the President, the two vice presidents and the national chairman. They were elected by all provinces in the same election. It would receive nomination from at least six provinces. Before 2004, there wasn’t really serious contestations on the vice presidents, it was a given that the same vice presidents would just be re-elected. In 2004, there was this fierce contestation, leading to what is historically known as the Tsholotsho issue.

There was a contest for the Vice Presidents and every contest requires a candidate to set up a campaign team. So, if you want to be Vice President or national chairman you will be having some people campaigning for you across the country. And those people campaigning for you, become your team and that is the birth of factionalism. Ordinarily you have a team campaigning for one of the contestants in each and every province and with a structure from within the structures of the party. If you have two people contesting to be Vice Presidents and each one has supporters in each province, you already have two factions.

They will be already having their loyalty with, their allegiance with you. So, who then is supporting the President? The President cannot have his own team again campaigning in each and every province. At the level of Vice Presidents, what then emerged was a team supporting Mai Mujuru and a team supporting any other contestant who was contesting, this brought about factionalism. I am sure the leadership having seen that once you have a contestation at Vice Presidents level you are going to have people aligning themselves to that particular vice president and then they form a faction. They then decided to say, no since the President is the one appointing all the other members of the politburo he may just appoint the Vice Presidents then you avoid people setting up campaign teams nationally, then having factions within the party.

The one centre of power principle, kills the need for campaign teams or political teams within a party which we call factions. So anyone asking for the re-emergence of elected vice presidents is indirectly asking for the creation of factions or the perpetuation of factions within the party, which is unhealthy. Because, if the Vice President you were campaigning for, succeeds in an election. That Vice President will reward you by influencing the President to appoint members of their campaign team to key positions both within the government and party. Now, if you have been appointed through the influence of a leader you pay allegiance to, you will not pay allegiance to the President you will be paying allegiance to that person who would have who has caused your appointment into certain positions. Then you are actually undermining the President and that causes friction and divisions.

So, we had people who were being rewarded by Mai Mujuru as to have supported her in her bid to become Vice President in 2004, then supported her in 2009. This is the cabal which then was no longer loyal to the President but Mai Mujuru, they had supported her, she was rewarding them. She was planning with them how to maintain power and they had become a political team in their own right and they were now threatening the position of the President. They were now going as far as influencing Mai Mujuru to say if you can win an election as Vice President, why can`t you be the President. That`s how the Gamatox issue came about and to avoid that,the constitution had to be amended to allow the President to appoint, so that the person who wants to be vice president does not need to have a political team. And you are holding the position now, in the pleasure of the appointment of the President. You are forced to be loyal and pay allegiance to the President, because if you do not show allegiance to the President he can remove you. So, it brings stability within the party.

TZ : Just recently, Mashonaland Central Province called for the revocation of that provision as amended in 2014. Without necessarily going to the political, factional innuendos of the move, what would be the implications of the removal of the provision that President Mugabe appoints his deputies?

PM: It would take us back to the Mai Mujuru era because you are now going to have Vice Presidents campaigning for political positions, creating their political teams and factions will come out again.

Once you have an election process, naturally there is going to be creation of factions. These factions are divisive, they weaken the President because people will then give allegiance and loyalty to the people they have campaigned for who will now be their leaders. And those who were supporting the losing Vice President will feel like they are being unfairly treated and maybe disgruntled. Some may even leave the party. Some will stop working hard for the party or continue campaigning on the sidelines for their preferred candidate for the next election. So they will be focusing their energies on supporting their candidate rather than supporting the party and its programmes. That weakens a political party, we saw that when Mai Mujuru was fired, her group of supporters moved on with her and went on to create their own political party. That is an undesirable outcome.

TZ: Discussions are quite heated now but some people are saying if this were to pass it could curtail the powers of the party President?

PM: My view is that it would not succeed because people still have fresh memories of what happened to the Mujuru cabal and how they tried to undermine the power of the President. So it will be read correctly that this is an attempt to undermine the power of the President. You are effectively saying that Mr President you do not know how to choose leadership, we want to choose it for you. You go to the extent of even saying Mr President you do not know how to choose your Cabinet, we want to choose it for you. You will be going further to say, Mr President you do not know how to choose the Politburo, we want to choose it for you as a people. You are actually forcing the President to actually have an immediate subordinate he may not want to work with.

President being first secretary he must have the liberty to choose people he can work with. If you open up this choice to a simple election, you may have a Vice President who has no loyalty whatsoever to the Head of State and you have friction at the top leadership and that is not healthy for a party.

So, we in Zanu-PF we have always understood that the person we choose to be President, we give him the mandate to choose those he will work with to deliver on the manifesto and the promises.

The entire country leadership of the party, elects a President they give him full confidence like the current President. The proposal is a direct attack on the integrity of President Mugabe, I expect the proposer to withdraw it. Because he may not have read well, that they are effectively saying that the President is incapable of selecting good Vice Presidents. If they have an issue with a particular Vice President they should raise it as an issue with a particular Vice President rather than undermining the power and authority of the President which is effectively what these people from Mash Central are saying. They are undermining the President himself, they are undermining the Vice Presidents, both of them. It is setting a very bad precedent.

TZ: But then, some have argued that rules should be flexible enough so they do not get broken?

PM: I have failed to give meaning to that statement, I have really failed to give meaning to that comment. I am not sure what it says. If my understanding it is simply that, every rule should have flexibility, but that flexibility should not go to the extent of undermining the authority of the President of the party.

You are actually saying this President of the party is not capable of selecting good Vice Presidents, Vice Presidents of merit, Vice Presidents who can deliver, Vice Presidents who stand with him and by him.

If the argument is that lets not be rigid, no argument has been advanced to give good reason why we must change. We cannot change the constitution focusing on a particular individual. I did not understand the thinking in 2014 to be that, we want to make a rule so that we remove Mai Mujuru.

I understood it to mean that the consequences of someone being directly elected is the creation of a faction and we want to destroy factionalism by allowing the President to choose Vice Presidents by abolishing the office of National Chairman as superfluous. What happened in 2009 is a political team was created, the former national chairman came into alliance with VP Mai Mujuru then they had political team that political team campaigned for Mai Mujuru and The National Chairman then they won, after winning that election in 2009, they continued to relate together with their supporters then they became a cabal.

In 2014 we were saying our reasoning was that as the legal department of the party our reasoning in making the proposal for the abolishment of the direct election process was that, we did not want to see the reincarnation of factions created when people are now campaigning for office.

If the President appoints then no one has a right and a reason for having a political team. Therefore, I am challenging those making this proposal to give us sound reasons why they would allow the President to select a Politburo and then deny him the right to select his Vice Presidents who are also members of the Politburo. So they want to create two systems in the Politburo, some are elected by the President some are elected directly by the people if we have one way of selecting our leadership let it be.

In any event, the President is not identifying people for the Politburo from nowhere. They have been elected in congress into the central committee, you have given him people in the central committee. Then he says from this committee so and so will be my Vice President and so and so will be for Commissariat and that is the way he does with cabinet, you elect members of the parliament then he chooses his cabinet. The politburos including the Vice Presidents are members of the secretariat who are executive members of the party, so we have adopted the same way cabinet is actually setup.

TM: The national constitution provides for running mates in 2023. Do you see your party Zanu Pf going in sync with the national constitution come 2023?

PM: Certainly when you have adopted the running mate system you can have the president choosing his own running mates in the party so the time he is elected, he is elected together with his running mate whom he has chosen on his own.

So, by reposing trust in him you are also having trust in his subordinates. The running mate system does not take away the right to choose his Vice President but we are also saying at the same time you are electing the President you are also electing the Vice President so it’s perfectly in sync. The idea is you do not have a President with his own team then Vice Presidents with their own team .The same team of the President is the same team of the Vice President that, is the beauty of the running mate system .

What is being proposed is that the President is elected on his own, and each Vice President elected on their own this means the teams have different supporters than that of the President. That is how you end up have multiple centers of power, but in the running mate system there is one centre of power, he chooses his running mates who become Vice Presidents so the team which elects the President also elects the Vice Presidents.

TZ: Lastly, can factionalism, with which lens the current divisive proposal is being viewed be stemmed by any legal instruments or safeguards?

PM: Its difficult, one of the legal safeguards is to avoid election at the level of the vice presidents that’s a legal safe guard.

Then there is no need for sm1 to say I prefer that one to be Vice President, against that one it’s now up to the discretion of leader ,then there is no need for factionalism.

Factionalism is created by preferences you prefer so and so against so and so and you give allegiance to the one you prefer and it becomes dangerous when you give your allegiance and total loyalty to that person more than with the party or the leader.

That is when it becomes dangerous. Factionalism in a party is difficult to eradicate as long as you have an electoral system along the way.

Say, in a constituency you have primary elections, the moment you have primary elections you have groupings contesting for power, those groupings are already factions.

Ideally you expect after elections they disappear but naturally they don’t some even become bonded in friendship and other associations but you don’t want these to exist in the highest level it destroys the party.

In a democratic system factionalism exists as a means of providing competition for power. Competition for power is healthy. It becomes unhealthy when it creates divisions in the party.