By Lance Guma
20 July 2011
Political turncoat Jonathan Moyo has taken the Daily News to court in an attempt to stop the paper from serializing his articles, mostly from 2008 to 2010, which criticized Robert Mugabe. Over the weekend the paper made the lawsuit pointless by publishing over 30 different quotations from his articles over the years, in which Moyo makes known his very negative views on Mugabe, his vice presidents and ZANU PF as a party.
In several of the articles Moyo said it was important for Mugabe to step down arguing this was “no longer a dismissible opposition slogan but a strategic necessity that desperately needs urgent legal and constitutional action by Mugabe himself well ahead of the presidential election scheduled for March 2008 in order to safeguard Zimbabwe’s national interest, security and sovereignty.”
Moyo said under Mugabe’s rule the economy had melted and that the ZANU PF leader was “now too old, too tired.” Notwithstanding the fact that Moyo is currently the chief strategist for ZANU PF, back then he felt “the prevalence of unkind jokes about Mugabe “on text messages and the Internet say it all. Mugabe now lacks the vision, stature and energy to effectively run the country, let alone his party.”
The Tsholotsho North MP criticized Mugabe over the controversial Operation Murambatsvina exercise, where nearly a million people were displaced and livelihoods were destroyed. Moyo then wrote that Mugabe’s “failure to visit stranded families left homeless and suffering from the irrational acts of his own government speaks volumes of his cold and cruel leadership style.”
Turning to the land reform exercise Moyo said: “If the truth be told, the 2000 land reform programme was itself a hasty, brutal and chaotic response to serious national problems that were already present.” Moyo argued this “was not a sustainable policy action,” and that the “brutal and chaotic response was more about Mugabe’s political survival than about redressing historical injustice.”
Moyo said even though Mugabe was “unleashing violence against opposition politicians in police cells, while giving the impression that he is still like an invincible lion, the inescapable home truth visible to all and sundry is that he is now behaving like a cornered rat whose quandary is that every escape route it tries is a dead-end.” He savaged factional leaders in ZANU PF as ‘living in a fool’s paradise’ because Mugabe did not want anyone to succeed him.
The former Information Minister did not have any kind words for Vice President Joice Mujuru either, saying she is “seemingly content with wanting to become executive state president by crisscrossing the country in the glare of the media hoping to win voters by waving “a pigs-and-chicken manifesto” in an economy whose wheels have fallen off.”
Commenting on the March 2008 election Moyo wrote: “The simple truth which ZEC has found hard to stomach and which Mugabe and his shocked cronies have found hard to swallow is that Morgan Tsvangirai won the presidential election even if with less than the required absolute majority. In other words, Tsvangirai got more votes than Mugabe and thus defeated him.”
These articles exposing Moyo as a political opportunist are proving a constant thorn in the flesh for him. Only this week it was reported Moyo’s future in ZANU PF was hanging by a thread as top officials wanted him kicked out after accusing him of trying to destroy the party from within.
Moyo’s constant attacks on SADC and South African President Jacob Zuma are also being viewed as a deliberate attempt to alienate ZANU PF in the region.
The re-publication of old articles showing Moyo’s views on Mugabe and the party have not helped his cause either and this is why he is trying to block the Daily News and other papers from serializing them.
|
