US embassy cable - 05HARARE83

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 HARARE 000083 
 
SIPDIS 
 
AF/S FOR D. MOZENA, B. NEULING 
NSC FOR SENIOR AFRICA DIRECTOR C. COURVILLE, D. TEITELBAUM 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/08/2009 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, PHUM, PINR, ZI, ZANU-PF 
SUBJECT: TURMOIL AND INTRIGUE CONTINUE IN RUN-UP TO ZANU-PF 
PRIMARIES 
 
REF: (A) 04 HARARE 2090 (B) 04 HARARE 2063 (C) 04 
     HARARE 2001 
 
Classified By: Ambassador Christopher W. Dell under Section 1.5 b/d 
 
1.  (C) SUMMARY: Harare's headlines continue to be dominated 
by tales of intra-ZANU-PF conflicts and a spy scandal in the 
run-up to the ruling party's parliamentary primaries 
scheduled for January 15.  Plans to reserve a quota of seats 
for women appears to be the method of choice for dislodging 
candidates not favored by the party leadership, but with 
primaries just a day away, the party has yet to release a 
slate of approved candidates.  Latest reports indicate many 
party moderates will join hard-liners as casualties in an 
exercise that seems geared principally to perpetuate 
lock-step loyalty and top-down decision-making within the 
party.  Political violence here continues to be principally 
within the ruling party, with more ZANU-PF supporters being 
arrested each week.  The GOZ has announced it is finally 
repossessing farms from prominent figures who received more 
than one farm under land reform.  Finally, the official press 
identified South Africa as the government implicated in the 
espionage ring, but public details about the affair remain 
scant, fostering rumors that continue to fan witch-hunt 
atmospherics within the ruling party.   END SUMMARY. 
 
No Candidates for Election Two Days Away 
----------------------------- 
 
2.  (C) As of January 13, ZANU-PF had yet to approve a final 
slate of candidates for the party's January 15 parliamentary 
primaries.  State radio on January 14 announced that 48 of 
the 120 districts would be contested in the primaries.  The 
politburo and presidium (the party's four senior figures, 
including the President) reportedly had approved a final list 
that would be publicly announced on the 14th. 
 
3.  (C) The nomination exercise has been hamstrung by the 
intersection of a host of competing factors: fall-out from 
the Tsholotsho debacle (reftels), recently announced limiting 
criteria for candidates (ref A), the party's efforts to 
implement a quota of thirty percent of the seats for female 
candidates, and appeals by disqualified candidates.  Latest 
reports suggest the list of seats reserved for women will 
effectively exclude not only controversial Information 
Minister Jonathan Moyo, but a host of "moderates", many of 
whom do not appear to have been associated with the 
Tsholotsho confab. 
 
SIPDIS 
 
4.  (C) Widespread disappointment within the party over the 
selection process for primary candidates has sparked 
well-publicized demonstrations, including one on January 4 at 
the party's Rotten Row headquarters in which Election 
Directorate head Elliott Manyika was prevented from leaving 
until he pledged to consider protesters' demands. 
Intra-party violence has continued to flare as well, 
resulting in additional arrests (and, as with arrested 
opposition figures, the speedy release) of ruling party 
supporters. 
 
5.  (C) Complicating the situation has been the absence of 
President Mugabe from the country through much of the 
ferment; he returned January 12 from a brief official trip to 
Tanzania following an earlier extended vacation in Malaysia 
during late December and early January.  In his public 
addresses to party faithful, including an address to 
protesters at Rotten Row on January 10, Mugabe urged the 
party to rally behind candidates who were being selected 
"according to the wishes of the people" ... within 
"guidelines set by the party." 
 
Senior Land Reform Beneficiaries Targeted 
--------------------------- 
 
6.  (C) The official press reported in early January that the 
GOZ was taking back farms from senior GOZ officials who had 
taken more than one farm under fast-track land reform.  The 
measures begin to implement recommendations for a one 
person-one farm policy included in the Utete Commission 
Report completed in late 2003.  Officials forced to surrender 
farms reportedly include Moyo, Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge, 
Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo, Deputy Minister 
for Gender and Youth Shuvai Mahofa, Deputy Minister of Water 
Resources and Infrastructure Tinos Rusere, and former 
Mashonaland West Governor Peter Chanetsa. 
 
Spy Scandal Remains Obscure; South Africa Publicly Implicated 
--------------------------------- 
 
7.  (C) After the Ministry of Information publicly admonished 
the nation's media last week to cover the espionage cases 
"responsibly", local coverage generally has receded from the 
front page and become markedly less sensational and 
speculative -- essentially limited to a chronicling of 
mundane aspects of court appearances and the like.  During 
the past week, the official media has reported on the arrest 
of an unnamed official in the Ministry of National Security 
and the flight of Geneva-based diplomat, Erasmus Moyo, in 
connection with the widening investigation.  The official 
Herald newspaper on January 14 reported without fanfare but 
in a front page story that Chiyangwa allegedly had been 
selling secrets to South Africa, which it implied may have 
been a conduit to other governments.  An earlier edition of 
the Herald noted that three MDC officials were being 
investigated in connection with the matter, but our MDC 
contacts have been unable to confirm that. 
 
Rumors Fuel Ferment 
--------------- 
 
8.  (C) The soft clampdown on espionage-related reporting has 
not stopped rumors from flying and contributing to escalating 
fear and loathing within the ruling party.   Just before the 
spy story broke, a business figure close to the party told 
poloff that a rumor making the rounds in senior party circles 
had Speaker of the Parliament Emmerson Mnangagwa connected to 
the UK's MI-5.  An internet news service reported recently 
that the probe was closing in on Mnangagwa, and another story 
pegged Minister of State Security Nicholas Goche and Minister 
for Local Government Ignatius Chombo as targets of the 
investigation. 
 
9.  (C) Rumors also continue to circulate about the 
Tsholotsho meeting that provoked the Old Guard crackdown 
 
SIPDIS 
against the Young Turks (reftels).  Media contacts conveyed 
privately to the Embassy, but have not reported publicly,) 
that a meeting convened by some of the Tsholotsho 
participants in Bulawayo the day before the Tsholotsho 
meeting was plotting how to remove the President.  The 
conspiracy reportedly included Reserve Bank Governor Gono and 
Security Minister Goche, and was known to President Mugabe. 
A contact of questionable reliability told the DATT that 
military officers were involved in Tsholotsho conspiracy, 
which had amounted to the plotting of a coup. 
 
Comment 
-------- 
 
10.  (C) We have found little to substantiate these rumors 
and doubt their credence.  Nonetheless, they are significant 
as an indication of atmospherics in a party increasingly 
consumed by fear and loathing within itself.  Deep individual 
insecurities and innumerable conflicting personal agendas 
will continue to stifle meaningful intra-party debate and 
drive more blood-letting built on misinformation campaigns 
and back-room plotting. 
 
11.  (C) The breadth of the effective purge underway has gone 
far beyond those implicated in the pecadilloes of Tsholotsho. 
 While the purge of Moyo and other hardliners is welcomed by 
most inside and outside the party, other casualties include 
"moderate" voices, such as former Tribune publisher Kindness 
Paradza; respected parliamentary chairmen Lazarus Dokora, 
Charles Majange, and Paul Mazikana; and Eddison Zvobgo, Jr., 
the heir apparent to his late and widely respected father's 
powerful Masvingo Karanga faction -- all of whom enjoy 
relatively good rapport with the opposition and have been 
useful Embassy contacts.  The common denominator among the 
purged is their respective independent streaks, whether 
hard-line or moderate.  Their replacements generally will be 
individuals of little stature or resources and completely 
beholden to the party leadership to whom they owe their 
positions.  In sum, these latest developments conform to 
recent trends that aggrandize Mugabe's stature and position 
at the expense of all others in the party. 
 
12.  (C) The various sources and indicia of turmoil within 
the party -- the Tsholotsho debacle, the espionage imbroglio, 
farm take-backs, and primaries-related conflict -- are all 
relevant to Mugabe's overarching priority of imposing 
discipline within the party.  Nonetheless, each to some 
extent has its own impetus.  Thus, developments will evolve 
to some extent independently, although we expect the 
leadership to try to shape them to advance overarching party 
objectives.  However, as these interrelated and complicated 
developments continue to unfold and influence one another, 
the possibility grows that they will spin out of Mugabe's 
control. 
 
13.  (C) The latest developments reinforce Mugabe/Old Guard 
dominance and suppress independent thought in the party but 
are not without risk to the ZANU-PF leadership.  First, the 
alienation of so many significant party leaders and activists 
may diminish the party's turnout at parliamentary elections 
in March.  Certainly, prominent coverage of ZANU-PF's turmoil 
and apparent disarray by both the official and independent 
press has not reflected well on the ruling party as it seeks 
to sell itself to the electorate.  The party's absorption 
with its own crises also has taken the heat off the MDC, 
which is taking advantage of the hiatus to quietly mobilize 
its campaign troops without the concentrated official 
suppression efforts that hamstrung it in past elections. 
Finally, the environment is gradually becoming more conducive 
to the potential emergence of a third party consolidated from 
disaffected elements of ZANU-PF and the MDC -- a possibility 
raised by bitterly disappointed ZANU-PF members some time ago 
(ref C), although such a development still seems unlikely in 
the short term. 
 
DELL