Rein in your wife, Zanu PF youths tell Mugabe

REUTERS President Robert Mugabe and his wife

Grace wave to supporters. File Photo: Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters
Harare - A shadowy group of Zanu PF youths calling themselves the Save Zanu PF Campaign (SZC)
on Tuesday called on President Robert Mugabe to rein in his wife Grace, saying she had ganged up
with some top officials to destroy the party.
The call by the group, suspected to be supporting a faction led by Vice President Emmerson
Mnangagwa, dubbed Team Lacoste, in the fractured Zanu PF party, came ahead of a special
Politburo meeting scheduled for Wednesday, ostensibly to deal with the issue of factionalism, which
is threatening to tear the revolutionary party apart.
Addressing a press conference at a local hotel in Harare, the group's national coordinator, Godfrey
Tsenengamu, said Grace was working with the Generation 40 group, opposed to Mnangagwa's
ascendency to the presidency in the event Mugabe leaves office, and to isolate the veteran ruler
from his traditional pillars of support and strength so that they could strike him at his weakest point.
Comrade President, we plead with you to rein and restrain our respected mother, your wife Dr Grace
Mugabe for the good of the party, your legacy, unity and for her own good as a politician, he said.
He said had Grace been just a politician, and not Mugabe's wife, they could have stopped her in her
tracks.
We don't intend to say much on this subject, Your Excellency, but she must be advised to stop
abusing the respect and loyalty that we have for you as our party President and continue to use that
cover to advance her interests.
Tsenengamu said Grace Mugabe and her allies had no power to suspend party members, in
reference to the suspension of three provincial chairpersons linked to Mnangagwa by the party's
Political Commissar, Saviour Kasukuwere.
Your Excellency, Cde President, as far as we know, you are the only state and party authority we
know as you were elected in national polls in 2013 and at the Zanu PF National People's Congress in
December 2014 and you have all powers invested in you as the appointing authority with the
prerogative to disappoint and appoint in both the party and the government, he said.
He added: We don't think it needs any rally of some sort to first cause embarrassment on leaders you
would have appointed where untested allegations are pushed against certain individuals in the

party, government and sensitive sectors like security where the alleged perpetrators are not given
the right to reply at the same rallies.

Tsenengamu, who ironically was spotting in a Lacoste designer label t-shirt, said Grace Mugabe was
addressing rallies across the country in her capacity as the Secretary for Women's Affairs, and not
as the wife of the President. Without saying much, can you be reminded that you are not the party or
state authority as you claimed at your rally in Chiweshe recently because in 2013 we elected
President Robert Gabriel Mugabe to the office of the State President and at the Party Congress in
December 2014 we elected him to be party president and First Secretary and you as the Secretary
for Women's Affairs and that authority in the President in either capacity cannot be abused by a
mere Secretary for Women's Affairs. A doctor's wife is not a doctor and can't undertake surgical
operations, so is the kombi driver's wife who cannot use her husband's driving license to drive on
our roads, he said.
African News Agency
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