Mliswa tears into Chiwenga over “corrosive” ZANU PF conference speech

Former ZANU PF Mashonaland West provincial chairman Temba Mliswa has castigated Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, describing his introductory remarks at the 23rd ZANU PF National People’s Conference in Chinhoyi as corrosive, discordant and ill-timed.

Mliswa said on Saturday the annual indaba was meant to be a strategic showcase for policy, programmes and the national developmental trajectory — not a platform for settling old scores.

“When members assemble for an event as momentous as the 23rd ZANU PF National People’s Conference, the expectation is singular and solemn: to articulate policy, to outline programmes, and to chart the developmental trajectory,” Mliswa said.

“It is not, and has never been, a forum for the exhumation of settled matters or the resurrection of staid grievances long disposed of by the Party through appropriate channels.”

Mliswa said the conference is, outside Congress, the highest theatre of ideological clarity and purpose, and a pedestal to show a united, disciplined and progressive revolutionary movement to the nation and the world.

What appears to have upset the former chairman is the sharp contrast between President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s address — which, according to Mliswa, focused on production, development and positive economic indicators — and Chiwenga’s remarks, which he claimed veered into blunt self-criticism and pointed political messaging.

Introducing Mnangagwa in Chinhoyi on Friday, Chiwenga asked delegates to confront uncomfortable realities, switching into Shona: “Chii chakaita kuti 2nd Republic ivepo? Kwaive kugadzirisa zvakaipa zvanga zvichiitika mumashure, hatisi kudzokorora here kuita zvakambotadzwa?” — essentially asking why the Second Republic was born and whether the party was repeating past mistakes.

“This beckons us to a brutal and honest self-appraisal,” he told delegates. “Are our resolutions truly coming from the people? Do our conferences authentically capture the voices of the grassroots? Do we truly understand the aspirations of our people?”

For Mliswa, that line of questioning crossed a line. Chiwenga went on to stress that the strength of ZANU PF had always emanated from the people, that the party belongs to the people and never to individuals, and that leaders must be willing to introspect and engage in self-criticism.

He said the guiding principle of Gutsaruzhinji — serving the broad masses — must remain central, and that resolutions should be judged by their tangible impact on livelihoods.

The most politically charged section of Chiwenga’s speech, and the part that appears to have provoked Mliswa’s ire, came when he spoke about change.

“While change is inevitable, it must be orderly, anchored in our party structures and guided by our constitution. Change must be driven by the people, not imposed from above,” Chiwenga said, reminding the President that “the voice of the people is the voice of God.”

He invoked the founding father of modern China, Chairman Mao — “Individual desires or private virtues are meaningless outside of their relationship to the collective” — and added in Shona, “Mazvake mazvake haana kwaanotisvitsa,” meaning self-serving actions get us nowhere.

Chiwenga warned that delegates are merely “temporary custodians” of the vanguard party, that their time on earth is finite, and asked what legacy they were leaving. He said leaders are there to serve the people, never to be served by them, and that words must find expression in actions, placing service above personal ambition.

He said the collective resolve to attain Vision 2030 must be to consolidate economic development, uplift living standards and “make them proud citizens of this country not hewers of wood and drawers of water, surviving from the benevolence of a privileged few” — a line widely read as a critique of growing inequality.

Mliswa said such messaging created a contradiction from within the Presidency itself.

“It is therefore alarming, how at a time when the country is registering positive indicators as so demonstrated by President Mnangagwa’s address which focused on production and development, one could craft a speech so corrosive and so discordant with the national mood as that read by VP Chiwenga,” he said.

“Such a contradiction in messaging from the Presidency itself raises serious questions of discipline and coordination.”

Mliswa turned his fire on the Presidency’s speechwriters. If Presidential spokesman George Charamba was penning both speeches, Mliswa said, then he had “ceased to be an asset and has become a constant and existential danger to the coherence of the State.” If not, he said, the team around Chiwenga must be held culpable and reconstituted for allowing a “shocking and ill-timed diatribe on a platform engineered for unity and developmental focus.”

He contrasted Chiwenga’s address with Mnangagwa’s, which he described as exemplary, mature, measured and modernist, anchored on national development, economic consolidation and livelihoods.

“That is what the people, true owners of the Party, are interested in. Not theatrical genuflections in public over matters that have already been addressed by the appropriate organs,” Mliswa said.

“It is precisely such theatrics that provoke some of us to posit that if one finds himself so irreconcilably at odds with the prevailing order, would not honour demand that he, as a matter of principle, stand down?”