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President Robert Mugabe
By our Correspondent
HARARE, 6 May, 2007 – President Robert Mugabe allegedly lost his temper over reports of support for him and the ruling Zanu-PF party in the city of Bulawayo that turned out to have been based essentially on false information.
A livid is said to have fired a broadside at the party's political Commissar, Elliot Manyika, last Wednesday, accusing him of having misinformed the party about the status and strength of the party in Matabeleland region, in general and the regional capital of Bulawayo, in particular.
Highly placed sources within the party say the 83 year-old leader, who is much feared in the top echelons of his party, was visibly infuriated when he badgered the hapless Manyika during a Politburo meeting.
The sources said the cause of Mugabe's rage was the chaos witnessed last week during the party's abortive Bulawayo provincial executive elections. The elections were aborted after it emerged that most of the candidates waiting to vote for a new provincial executive did not even belong to any known Zanu-PF structure.
"Mugabe fired at Manyika, accusing him of misleading him and the party that all was well in Bulawayo," the source said. "He was angry over the chaos that rocked last week's proposed provincial elections where people who claimed to be card-carrying members who wanted to vote turned out not to have party cards," said one of the sources.
"He ordered Manyika to ensure that the next elections scheduled for next Saturday go well." Manyika has in the past informed the party that the restructuring exercise, which was carried out countrywide to ensure that there are members in each of the party's structures was going on well.
He had assured Mugabe that the party was visible on the ground.
Another source said Mugabe also quizzed Manyika on which structures he was referring to when he presented a report to say his department had audited the structures. The source said Manyika had tried to defend himself by accusing the party's heavyweights in Bulawayo of having failed to help him put the house in order.
He said the Zanu PF political commissar had pointed out that politburo member and former cabinet minister, Dumiso Dabengwa did not belong to any cell structure.
"The issue was hot in the Politburo," the source said. "Manyika accused Dabengwa, a member of the Zanu-PF politburo member, of failing to appear in any of the party's grassroot structures, but yet he tried to influence the politics of the province. He said it was politicians like Dabengwa who were letting him down because their roots in the structures could not be traced," said the source.
The ruling party commands little support in Matabeleland region, where Mugabe deployed North-Korean trained Five Brigade in the 1980s leaving an estimated 20 000 innocent civilians dead.
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