Mugabe’s Cabinet Reshuffle-Power, Patronage and Greed

/The 9th of October Cabinet reshuffle – a Mnangagwa management scheme – can be understood in the context of the current intra-ZANU-PF discohesion and a trinity of interwoven matrices in President Robert Mugabe’s struggle to capture ZANU-PF and 2018 elections – greed, power and patronage.

A critical analysis of the destooled, revised and enthroned cabinet ministers shows that, Mugabe attempts to dispel fears that he is no longer in control of ZANU-PF and effects thereof, heighten uncertainties among internal party enemies that he can still unmake them with the same ease he felt when making them, put his presidential stamp on the G40 faction as the anointed faction while making sure he doesn’t loose the state machinery necessary for remaining power.

The real and immediate challenge to the longevity of President Mugabe’s rule is Vice President Emerson Mnangagwa who, as Grace Mugabe testified, has caused him “to sleep with one eye open” whereas, the opposition being the second. CapturingZANU-PF, state machinery and wining the 2018 election is the actual challenge to Robert Mugabe to which the reshuffle has been the first remedy. So, the reshuffle was manufactured to “manage” Mnangagwa and show his followers and anybody in ZANU-PF where power lies, capture strategic state machinery and create an electioneering hand ahead of the 2018 elections.

Source: Zimbabwe Democracy Institute

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