However, Mnangagwa became too assertive when in late 2002 he and retired army chief of staff Zvinavashe secretly approached the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, to negotiate a settlement including an exit package and security guarantees for Mugabe. This move was supported by South African president Thabo Mbeki but had not received Mugabe’s nod. In any case, Tsvangirai, who feared a trap, revealed the plot to the press in January 2003. When Muzenda died in October 2003, Mnangagwa, being the most prominent Karanga in government, demanded the post of vice president left vacant. However, Mugabe had not forgiven Mnangagwa’s attempt to strike a deal with the MDC behind his back. In early 2004, the anticorruption campaign conveniently targeted Mnangagwa’s close business associate Mutumva Mawere, who had to flee surreptitiously to South Africa while his properties were impounded.43 Mnangagwa was accused also of shady deals in gold and foreign currencies, and a special committee was appointed to investigate his management of ZANU-PF’s business empire when he had been party treasurer.
In the meantime Mnangagwa had secured the support of a majority of provincial party chairmen who could nominate him at the party congress and enrolled “Young Turks” opposed to the Mujuru/Sekeramayi faction, such as Jonathan Moyo and Patrick Chinamasa or Philip Chiyangwa. To placate this threat, Mugabe appointed Joyce Mujuru as vice president in September 2004, purportedly for the sake of gender balance, and in spite of her relative junior position in the original ZANU hierarchy. This choice satisfied the Mujuru faction while filling the position with somebody lacking the stature and abilities to threaten Mugabe.44 A secret meeting organized by Moyo in Tsholotsho (Matabeleland) on 18 November 2004 to plan a strike back at the Mujuru faction was infiltrated by the CIO and exposed, and all the plotters (except Chinamasa) were subsequently punished. Jonathan Moyo, who had a long-standing feud with General Mujuru, lost his Cabinet and Politburo positions and was expelled from the party in February 2005 when he vowed to contest the seat in Tsholotsho as an independent (which he won).45 The five provincial chairmen involved in the plot were suspended and later expelled from the party.46 Chiyangwa was implicated in an alleged spying network and jailed from mid-December 2004 to late February 2005. Mnangagwa himself was demoted in the party hierarchy and lost his position as speaker of parliament to John Nkomo.
However, following the parliamentary elections in which Mnangagwa failed once again to secure a seat, Mugabe reappointed him a nonconstituency MP and granted him a low-ranking position in Cabinet, if only to prevent Solomon Mujuru’s faction from feeling too powerful. The latter had control over the ZANU-PF candidacies in most constituencies in the subsequent 2005 elections and therefore strong influence over the two houses of Parliament, and the former army chief enjoyed large support in the national security agencies. This could have meant a threat to Mugabe, and once again in late 2005 and early 2006 the purported anticorruption drive was used to clip the wings of the Mujuru faction this time. When Mugabe’s attempt to have his presidential mandate extended until 2010 was resisted by some of the ZANU-PF cadres at the December 2006 party conference, the Mujuru faction was deemed responsible. Throughout 2007 and 2008—especially after the first presidential election turn and the ensuing violence—Mnangagwa was returned to his previous status of the right-hand man and potential successor. However, Mugabe despises his lieutenants’ abilities, and he trusts none of them to shield him from prosecution for human rights violations and guarantee his personal security. This is in part—besides his ingrained arrogance—why he postpones his retirement forever. At least until the fateful elections of 2008, he saw himself dying in office and suggested it by joking publicly, in July 2006, about his lieutenants’ having to resort to witchcraft to hasten the succession. When his henchman Elliot Manyika announced at a Central Committee meeting on 30 March 2007 that Mugabe would be ZANU-PF’s candidate in the 2008 presidential election, Mujuru had to go along with it, while Mnangagwa fully supported the idea, in order to gain time and fully redeem himself in Mugabe’s eyes—hence his role in the run-off campaign. Ahead of the party congress in December 2009, the province executives competed to endorse Mugabe once again—even calling him “Supreme Leader”—while the death of Vice President Msika on 12 August gave a new impetus to the endless struggle between the main two factions over the appointment of his successor and the leadership of the women and youth leagues.
Annihilating the Opposition Parties
At independence, ZANU-PF emerged as the dominant political force from the 1980 elections. However, Mugabe formed a government of national unity with ZAPU and a few whites, a decision widely perceived as gesture of goodwill. The rhetoric of “national unity” certainly appealed to a majority of black Zimbabweans longing for peace at last, even though a distorted record of the liberation struggle backed it.47 Mugabe also made his famous broadcast speech calling for reconciliation of all races in order to build a nonracial society and pledging to guarantee the white minority rights in future Zimbabwe, an undertaking reiterated at the independence ceremony.48 Two Rhodesian Front politicians—in addition to Denis Norman, a farmer unionist who had lobbied for a negotiated settlement, at the agriculture ministry—were included in the Cabinet and Mugabe went as far as consulting Ian Smith—leader of the opposition in Parliament—on policy issues until March 1981.49 However, there were perfectly rational motives behind this “Mr. Nice Guy” attitude. There was a strong economic rationale for the “reconciliation” with the whites, but it was primarily a political ploy preparing the ground for ZAPU’s forced incorporation into ZANU. The two main methods for getting rid of a political opposition are incorporation—voluntary or forced—and suppression, used alternately to guarantee highest efficiency.
Abel Muzorewa’s United African National Council (UANC),50 which had seemed so potent in 1978, was reduced to a subregional party, with only three seats in 1980, and was no longer a threat.51 Naturally, the political influence of the former white settlers was more of a concern. For the major part of the 1980s the experienced MPs of the former Rhodesian Front regrouped in the Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe (CAZ) and offered indeed some counterweight to the ruling party’s dominance in Parliament. However, a formal alliance between ZAPU and the Ian Smith-led CAZ was difficult to contemplate for the black nationalists, although Smith and Nkomo consulted each other frequently. Besides, the abolition of the separate voters roll and the reserved seats in 198752 technically put an end to white party politics in Zimbabwe. That removed an irritant (the government castigated the white electorate for returning 15 CAZ MPs out of 20 contested seats in the 1985 elections, and Norman then lost his Cabinet job), rather than suppressing a real threat to ZANU-PF power. In the meantime, Mugabe had confronted and subdued a more serious rival, and so complete was his triumph that the forced incorporation of ZAPU set a precedent—“no life outside ZANU-PF”—and certainly hampered the development of any serious opposition from 1987 to 1999.
Subjugating ZAPU
Mugabe decided that ZANU would fight the 1980 elections alone, instead of running for Parliament under the common banner of the Patriotic Front with ZAPU. Whatever the political arguments set forth, the truth of the matter was that Mugabe was not prepared to come second to Joshua Nkomo, his senior in the nationalist struggle, and let him become the first prime minister of an independent Zimbabwe. Once ZAPU was defeated in the founding elections and ZANU successfully established itself as the dominant partner in the coalition, it was perfectly logical to invite ZAPU leaders to join the Cabinet,