US embassy cable - 04HARARE2001

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 HARARE 002001 
 
SIPDIS 
 
AF/S FOR B. NEULING 
NSC FOR SENIOR AFRICA DIRECTOR C. COURVILLE 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/08/2009 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, PHUM, ZI, ZANU-PF 
SUBJECT: PARTY CONGRESS EXPOSES ZANU-PF DIVISIONS 
 
REF: (A) HARARE 1914 (B) HARARE 1913 
 
Classified By: Ambassador Christopher W. Dell under Section 1.5 b/d 
 
1.  (C) SUMMARY: ZANU-PF's Fourth Party Congress reinforced 
Robert Mugabe's unassailable authority atop a ruling party 
suffering from roiling ethnic and generational tensions. 
Recent personnel changes adjustments to the party leadership 
suggest the ascendancy of Mugabe's Zezuru faction and a 
victory of the party's Old Guard over the Young Turks, 
although further adjustments in the coming months may yet 
mollify disaffected groups and key individuals.  Although the 
Congress sounded familiar anti-Western themes, the apparent 
political demise of the party's most rabidly anti-Western 
mouthpiece, Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, may 
foreshadow a toning down of xenophobic rhetoric from the GOZ. 
 Nonetheless, the ruling party remains unlikely to undertake 
meaningful efforts toward rapprochement with either the 
opposition or the West for now.  END SUMMARY. 
 
Discord 
------- 
 
2.  (U) President Mugabe,s public criticism of "ambitious" 
party members who contributed to party disunity was the most 
striking aspect of the Party Congress.  To loud but not 
unanimous applause at the opening session, he castigated 
unnamed provincial chairmen for undertaking efforts without 
adequately consulting "the people."  He stressed the 
importance of party unity and the need for those who lost 
political contests to accept defeat.  Expanding on the theme 
of loyalty and discipline, Party Chairman John Nkomo's 
address to the opening session emphasized the importance of 
deferring to experience and demanded the sanctioning of 
unnamed individuals who were contributing to party disunity. 
More explicit about intra-party tensions in subsequent closed 
session, Mugabe reportedly denounced "narrow-minded" party 
members who focused on purported needs for regional and 
tribal balance. 
 
Suspensions Precede Congress 
---------------------------- 
 
3.  (U) On the eve of the Congress, the state media announced 
that the Politburo on November 30 had suspended six 
provincial chairpersons for six months: July Moyo (Midlands; 
also Minister of Energy), Mark Madiro (Manicaland), Daniel 
Shumba (Masvingo; also telecom magnate), Jacob Mudenda 
(Matabeleland North), Lloyd Siyoka (Matabeleland South), and 
Thomas Ncube (Bulawayo).  The six had attended an 
"unauthorized" meeting organized in Tsholotsho two weeks 
earlier by Information Minister Jonathan Moyo, in which 
participants reportedly planned to derail the impending 
selection by the party of Joyce Mujuru for the party's vacant 
vice-presidential slot.  According to the state press, the 
Politburo officially reprimanded but did not suspend the 
Information Minister and suspended war veterans leader 
Jabulani Sibanda for four years.  Speaker of the Parliament 
Emmerson Mnangagwa, who would have been the principal 
beneficiary of the meeting's designs, had been invited to 
Tsholotsho but chose to attend a Politburo meeting instead (a 
 
SIPDIS 
meeting at which he was forced to accede to Mugabe's 
instruction that a vice-presidential slot be reserved for a 
woman). 
 
Familiar Themes 
---------------- 
 
4.  (U) In his keynote speech on December 2 at ZANU-PF's 
Fourth Party Congress, President and Party First Secretary 
Mugabe hit on familiar themes in exhorting his party to 
remain united and resist threats from outside and inside the 
country.  Consistent with the banners announcing the 2005 
election as the "anti-Blair election," Mugabe devoted 
considerable attention in his 90-minute speech to Britain's 
purported designs on reversing land reform and effecting 
regime change.  Noting that 400 British companies continued 
to operate profitably in the Zimbabwe, he urged the HMG to 
reverse its anti-Zimbabwe posture.  He drew parallels between 
purported USG and HMG lies about weapons of mass destruction 
in Iraq with Western "lies" underlying "sanctions" against 
Zimbabwe.  He launched into a homophobic diatribe about the 
West's "rottenness of culture and un-Christian example" and 
concluded that Africa should be teaching the West about 
morality, not vice-versa.  The MDC leadership did not figure 
largely in the President's public remarks, other than to be 
cast as a British "stooge" and be criticized for courting 
opinion overseas instead of at home.  The President thanked 
regional groupings SADC, the AU, and COMESA for their 
friendship and support.  He also elaborated on familiar 
development-related themes, including anti-corruption efforts 
and the importance of addressing HIV/AIDS seriously, and 
conceded that the party needed to do more to make land reform 
more successful. 
 
Backbenchers Vent With Ambassador 
--------------------------------- 
 
5.  (C) At a lunch with the Ambassador on November 24, 
ZANU-PF backbench MPs Pearson Mbelekwa (Zvishavane; 
Chairperson of the Justice Committee), Kindness Paradza 
(Makonde; publisher of the shuttered Tribune), and Walter 
Mzembi (Masvingo South; Zvobgo faction winner of most recent 
parliamentary by-election) were candid about tensions within 
the party over Joyce Mujuru's selection.  They asserted that 
the intense VP contest had left wounds that would take a long 
time to heal.  Speculating that the party might not survive 
in its current form until 2008 (the next presidential 
election), they described the party as in crisis, with some 
members saying "we've had enough" while others were 
counseling patience.  The group and other younger leading 
members had joined the ruling party to "fight from within" 
and chafed over their lack of influence.  Everybody was 
struggling with "generational change management," with Mugabe 
effectively atop the party through a masterly exercise of 
divide and rule.  Nonetheless, they expressed confidence that 
Mugabe would step down as President in 2008 -- assuming he 
had a Politburo he trusted. 
 
6.  (C) The group was especially distressed over the 
exclusion of Karanga (Zimbabwe's most numerous ethnic group) 
representation in the presidium.  They asserted that elements 
that who had contributed and suffered most in the liberation 
effort, including the Ndebele and Manyika, were not being 
included sufficiently in the upper echelons of the 
restructured party.  They made it clear that Mnangagwa was 
their preferred choice for the presidium.  Mbelekwa, who had 
written a stout defense of Mnangagwa in the Financial Gazette 
the previous week, dubbed the Speaker "Zimbabwe's Gorbachev." 
 He asserted that Mnangagwa wanted to strengthen relations 
with the United States and Britain as well as to refurbish 
the country's tarnished investment climate.  He had cordial 
relations with the MDC and was responsible for a moderate 
approach to land reform in his province, Midlands, that 
spared it from the chaos associated with the rest of the 
country. 
 
7.  (C) The group forecast continued jockeying and 
intra-party conflict over the appointment of a new Politburo. 
 They claimed that the Central Committee (expanded by the 
Congress from 232 to 240 members) already was "packed" and 
offered little appeal as a path of influence in any event. 
Cabinet positions in the 40-member Politburo, which usually 
were associated with control over resources, were crucial to 
factions and aspiring leaders.  Parliamentary seats, filled 
by genuine contests in which candidates could appeal to the 
electorate, were good entrees for the younger generation, and 
the Parliament was beginning to assert itself as an 
institution.  The group suggested that campaigns for the 
upcoming primaries and MP elections would revolve around 
factional rivalries and local "deliverables" (clinics, 
schools, roads) rather than national policy.  They lamented 
the general "drought of skills" within the party relative to 
the government. 
 
8.  (C) The group asserted that 80 percent of the MDC were 
Karanga, many of whom would be inclined to link up with 
ZANU-PF's Karanga faction under the right circumstances. 
Remarkably, one suggested that the MDC would win a majority 
of contested seats in the upcoming election if the opposition 
was given even four weeks of free and fair access to the 
electorate.  Another conceded that the ruling party's record 
of failure left it nothing to run on but an "anti-Blair" 
platform. 
 
Mnangagwa Down But Not Out 
-------------------------- 
 
9.  (C) Mnangagwa remains a pivotal figure in Zimbabwean 
politics and Mugabe reportedly met with him at length after 
the party's nomination of Mujuru.  Notwithstanding his loss 
in the Veepstakes and the displacement of many of his key 
supporters, Mnangagwa remains the leading exponent of Karanga 
interests in the GOZ.  Mnangagwa also has garnered 
significant support among the party's Young Turks, as 
evidenced by the Ambassador's exchange with the backbenchers. 
 Always a careful balancer of factional interests, Mugabe can 
be expected to take steps to appease Mnangagwa and his 
supporters.  Indeed, many of Mnangagwa's supporters were 
named to the new Central Committee, and Mnangagwa himself, 
despite his association with the Tsholotsho group, so far has 
retained his positions as Parliamentary Speaker and Party 
Secretary for Administration.  An additional possibility 
 
SIPDIS 
would be his assumption of the office of Prime Minister, 
which is expected to be created via constitutional amendment 
should ZANU-PF win a 2/3 majority in Parliament in March as 
expected. 
 
Moyo Down And Out? 
------------------ 
 
10.  (C) The Tsholotsho imbroglio was driven not just by 
Mnangagwa opponents but also in large part by a widespread 
impetus within the party to rid itself of the mercurial Moyo, 
who was pilloried for organizing the meeting.  The knives 
have long been out for Moyo, who had deployed the state media 
in vitriolic attacks against VP Msika and Chairman Nkomo, 
among other party potentates.  Their successful casting of 
such attacks and the Tsolotsho meeting as disloyal to the 
President and undermining of party unity was sufficient 
pretext for the President to clip his wings.  Moyo was not 
named to the Central Committee, reportedly has had to cede 
some of his control over the state media, and is not expected 
to retain his position as Information Minister in a new 
Cabinet.  His political survival, at best in significantly 
diminished status, may depend on his ability to win the 
Tsholotsho parliamentary seat.  After dispensing large 
 
SIPDIS 
amounts of GOZ largesse on the district, Moyo had been 
favored in the run-up to the Congress, but his prospects have 
dimmed considerably. 
Comment 
------- 
 
11.  (C) The flap over the so-called Tsolotsho Declaration 
and related suspensions speaks volumes about the extent of 
ZANU-PF's internal democracy and Mugabe's control over the 
party.  Reprising a sequence last year when Mugabe invited 
discussion over succession and then slapped down those who 
took him up on it, Mugabe in recent months publicly and 
privately emphasized that the contests for party leadership 
slots were to be open and real.  Indeed, Mugabe's instruction 
for a female VP did not identify who the female was to be and 
he allowed the contest to proceed.  The Tsholotsho meeting 
was part of a VP selection process that was engineered to 
appear genuinely competitive right up to the weekend that the 
the provincial executives made their VP nominations (ref A). 
However, the true Mugabe view reasserted itself in the final 
stages of the process when a near hysterical Mugabe 
reportedly told the Politburo that he was boss, he made all 
the decisions, and any questioning of his views was 
tantamount to treason.  One can only assume that the wily 
Mugabe had all along prepared just such a scenario in order 
to smoke out and then crush any and all opposition within the 
party.  His successful positioning of Joyce Mujuru gives him 
the ideal putative heir for now: a popular figure nationally 
who boosts his party's image and who will be difficult for 
critics inside or outside the party to attack effectively, 
but one who has shown little overt ambition for senior 
leadership (her tendered resignation for family reasons some 
years ago was refused by the President) and who is fully 
beholden to him. 
DELL