He was once the controversial minister of information for President Robert Mugabe and a member of the ruling ZANU-PF politburo. Now Jonathan Moyo, who is an independent member of Parliament, is giving us an inside look into the Zimbabwe government. Moyo tells English to Africa reporter James Butty about a power struggle to within ZANU-PF over who will succeed President Robert Mugabe.
“If you have a situation such as we have in Zimbabwe, where the incumbent president has been in power for 26 years under one party and is serving the last few months of his tenure, 2008, that means ZANU-PF must find a successor. But because they have delayed doing so, and worse, because they don’t have a transparent and democratic means for doing so within ZANU-PF, it means you will have a power struggle. And it is raging.”
Moyo says it is a senseless question for anybody to ask him why he never spoke out as Zimbabwe’s minister of information.“That would be such a senseless question because it would be overlooking a fundamental issue, namely that ZANU-PF, as a liberation movement, is a summation of who we are as Zimbabweans. We as Zimbabweans fought for our liberation under this movement, and it does not make sense just because one of two or more individuals who constitute a clique hijacked [it], that we should condemn the movement itself. It is important to fight within. Right now the most critical opposition to Mugabe’s rule is within ZANU-PF. And the many people associated with the so-called Tsholotsho Declaration are inside ZANU-PF.”