US embassy cable - 05HARARE1290

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 HARARE 001290 
 
SIPDIS 
 
AF/S FOR B. NEULING 
NSC FOR SENIOR AFRICA DIRECTOR C. COURVILLE 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/31/2010 
TAGS: PGOV, PREL, PHUM, ZI, ZANU-PF 
SUBJECT: ZVOBGO ON RULING PARTY DYNAMICS 
 
 
Classified By: Ambassador Christopher Dell under Section 1.4 b/d 
 
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Summary 
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1.  (C) Eddison Zvobgo, Jr., an astute player in the ruling 
party's younger generation and son of Robert Mugabe's late 
principal intra-party rival, on September 12 told the 
Ambassador that the ruling party was essentially biding its 
time until its octeganarian leader passed from the stage. 
Zvobgo, who was recently installed in the party's Masvingo 
provincial hierarchy, asserted that the party remained 
relatively unified despite personal rivalries for now and 
characterized ethnic tensions as overblown.  Personal 
rivalries could spell the party's doom after Mugabe's 
departure but key players could line up behind Joyce Mujuru, 
about whom Zvobgo had relatively complimentary words.  Zvobgo 
urged the USG to continue to engage the ruling party and to 
step up its humanitarian assistance to Zimbabwe.  End summary. 
 
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Party Resigned to Unpopular President 
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2.  (C) Over lunch at the Residence, Zvobgo told the 
Ambassador that ZANU-PF was essentially a conservative, 
nationalist party.  But for Mugabe, its members were not 
ideological but aligned according to perceived competing or 
mutual personal interests.  Zvobgo claimed that "99.9 
percent" of the party recognized the "madness" of GOZ policy, 
which had been an unmitigated failure essentially since 
independence. Policies that brought the stock market to a 
standstill were only the latest example of gross incompetence 
stemming from the top.  He asserted that only Mugabe carried 
the "baggage" of his legacy within the party; those who 
assumed charge upon his departure could be expected to 
jettison that legacy and quickly re-orient the party more 
toward the West. 
 
3.  (C) Compounding people's frustrations and low morale was 
that nobody had a sense about how policy was even being made, 
Zvobgo added.  He related that on meeting retired General and 
Minister for Indigenization and Empowerment Josiah Tungamirai 
shortly before he died last month, Tungamirai had his head in 
his hands lamenting the party's complete lack of 
transparency.  Tungamirai had said that even though he was 
then a senior party figure who sat in the politburo and the 
cabinet, he didn't have a clue about how decisions were being 
made.  The party's complete lack of transparency was 
"politically traumatic" to the party's membership, Zvobgo 
maintained. 
 
4.  (C) According to Zvobgo, Mugabe's advancing age fueled 
such a cautious posture among politicians at every level that 
meaningful debate was absent.  Mugabe remained quite fit but 
everybody "could smell succession" and refused to risk their 
necks by taking any position that might raise the President's 
ire.  Zvobgo laughed at those who ridiculed Finance Minister 
Murerwa for not confronting the President on basic economic 
mismanagement when nobody confronted the President 
meaningfully on any issue.  At the same time, players quietly 
postured and devoted political energies to undermining each 
other while avoiding attention themselves.  Emmerson 
Mnangagwa's example underscored to all what happened when one 
shows too much ambition too soon. 
 
5.  (C) With most national policy set from the top, 
politicians were left consigned to the role of ward-healer, 
trying to deliver local services to their constituencies, 
Zvobgo noted.  This made them as dependent as ever to GOZ 
ministries who commanded what little resources remained, thus 
reinforcing the obeisance demanded by patronage. 
 
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Party Unity Despite Rivalries 
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6.  (C) Zvobgo painted a picture of relative party unity at 
the top despite the frustration and clash of personal 
interests.  He asserted that purported ethnic divisions 
within the party were overstated and sometimes magnified by 
posturing individuals looking to get purchase in their 
attacks on rivals.  In fact, aside from Solomon Mujuru, who 
lacked ambition to be President, Mugabe had never kept any 
individual or group close to him for the whole period since 
independence, Zvobgo maintained.  Mugabe's skill in balancing 
competing personalities while keeping them off balance 
sometimes pushed others to try to exploit ethnic tensions 
that weren't really there. 
 
7.  (C) Zvobgo noted that long significant factional 
rivalries in Masvingo were subsiding.  "For whatever 
reasons", the party leadership had installed elder party 
maverick Dzikamayi Mavhaire and himself to run the party's 
provincial structures.  Zvobgo noted that Tungamirai had been 
the party's de facto senior figure in the province, but his 
passing did not leave any official vacancy (other than his 
parliamentary seat) and so would not likely trigger factional 
infighting.  Like most throughout the country, people in 
Masvingo were absorbed with basic issues of food and housing 
and were uninclined to political action. 
 
8. (C) Zvobgo dismissed the "third force" as a mere 
expression of frustration with the dysfunctional political 
environment.  Those behind talk of a third force could stake 
out no political territory on a Zimbabwean political map that 
lacked an ideological left or right.  They might gain 
sympathy in the short run but could not gain adherents for 
the long haul.  Ruling party supporters would not eschew the 
perks of the patronage system and opposition supporters would 
be too angry to join the likes of Jonathan Moyo, the third 
force's most public advocate to date.  In any event, he 
maintained, any momentum behind the third force would come 
principally at the expense of the MDC, whose existence would 
ultimately be threatened should the third force emerge. 
 
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Mugabe Departure Will Trigger Uncertainty, National Relief 
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9.  (C) The ruling party's dysfunctional internal environment 
could lead to a destabilizing power struggle on Mugabe's 
departure, Zvobgo observed.  He conceded that this could 
spell the end of ZANU-PF but asserted that there may well be 
enough sense of mutual interest for key players to get behind 
a new leader.  "They're not stupid."  In this regard, Zvobgo 
complimented Vice President Joyce Mujuru, to whom he 
acknowledged he was aligned, as a "common sense" managerial 
type who could muster sufficient consensus.  Whether she 
could win over competing aspirants, such as Mnangagwa, would 
depend on the correlation of forces at the time and her 
ability to give competitors sufficient stake in a new power 
structure. 
 
10.  (C) Zvobgo noted that the overwhelming sense of 
"national relief" at Mugabe's passing may also play to Joyce 
Mujuru's advantage.  In the same vein, Zvobgo urged the 
international community to be ready when Mugabe left the 
scene and not to miss the opportunity to get behind somebody 
who could get the country on the road to much needed national 
recovery.  Neither the country nor the international 
community could "afford to dither when our long national 
nightmare ends." 
 
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Urges Bilateral Engagement 
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11.  (C) Zvobgo said he knew "good people" in most of 
ZANU-PF's provincial structures and urged that we remain 
engaged with them.  He offered to be helpful in facilitating 
meetings and communications.  He further appealed to the USG 
to continue to respond to Zimbabweans humanitarian needs, 
especially food and housing.  In this regard, he inquired if 
there was any way to make special arrangements to get food to 
Masvingo, where hunger was particularly acute. 
12.  (C) The Ambassador reiterated USG commitment to provide 
humanitarian assistance, notably in the areas of food and 
HIV-AIDS, without regard to political considerations.  The 
GOZ's refusal to request assistance or even acknowledge its 
need for food prevented much needed food assistance from 
going forward.  Without a specific appeal from the GOZ, we 
could not target food deliveries to Masvingo or anywhere else 
in the country.  The Ambassador suggested that Zvobgo 
influence the GOZ to adopt a more constructive approach. 
 
13.  (C) The Ambassador expressed further frustration and 
bafflement over the GOZ's relentless pursuit of ruinous, 
self-destructive policies, which was a significant impediment 
to rehabilitating relations.  Operation Restore Order, for 
example, represented a major setback and had to be evaluated 
by the international community as a possible crime against 
humanity.  He cautioned Zimbabwe against viewing the IMF's 
recent six-month reprieve against expulsion as any kind of 
victory.  Real turn-around at home and in Zimbabwe's 
international image would require major and sustained 
economic and political reform. 
 
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Bio Note 
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14.  (C) Zvobgo is a confident, affable and accessible 
interlocutor.  His exchanges with the Embassy have been 
devoid of the sterile political rhetoric that infect 
exchanges with most in the ruling party.  He offers candid 
and insightful reads of the political situation here. 
Well-connected inside and outside of his party, he told 
emboff at an earlier meeting that he followed the returns of 
the 2002 presidential election at the South Africa home of 
telecom magnate and GOZ critic Strive Masiyiwa, rooting for 
the MDC.  He sees effective delivery of services to local 
constituencies, particularly in Masvingo, as a key to 
political advancement and frequently seeks resources to 
advance this objective in meetings. 
 
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Comment 
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15.  (C) Tensions between ruling party leaders and factions 
are difficult to evaluate but we agree with Zvobgo that 
Mugabe can keep the party as cohesive as he needs to for now. 
 The allegiance of Zvobgo (like Mnangagwa, a Karanga) - and 
ex-Finance Minister Simba Makoni (a Manyika) - to the 
dominant Mujuru/Zezuru faction suggests the primacy of 
personal connections and patronage networks over ideology or 
ethnic allegiance in the posture of the country's next 
generation of prospective leaders. 
DELL