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#ZanuPFMakesPoliticalRealignments
President Emmerson Mnangagwa has made surprise changes in the Zanu PF politburo - the party’s supreme decision-making body - amid reports that he wants to move to amend the constitution to facilitate his secret plan to hang onto power beyond the 2028 constitutional limit.
To execute that mission, the Zanu PF leader brought back trusted political ally Patrick Chinamasa to legal affairs.
Chinamasa, as Justice minister, and Mnangagwa, Rural Housing minister, were tasked by the late former president Robert Mugabe in 2005 and 2006 to change the constitution to harmonise the general elections by moving the presidential and parliamentary polls to 2010.
This meant that Mugabe would have got two more years in office without an election.
Alternatively, this meant MPs would have had their tenures cut by two years if elections were brought forward to 2008 as it later became the case.
Mugabe was eventually forced into the 2008 elections which he feared amid internal strife within Zanu PF and economic meltdown characterised by hyperinflation.
He lost the first round of polling to the late MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, but remained in office after a bloody run-off.
Zanu PF was also defeated by the MDC in parliamentary polls.
This led to a government of national unitt from 2009-2013.
Now Mnangagwa wants to de-harmonise the elections to secure himself two more years in power between from 2028 and 2030.
He wants parliamentary polls held in 2028, with the next presidential election coming in 2030.
Although Mnangagwa has now dropped his third term bid under military pressure and says he has no intention of seeking that, his close political allies say he wants to stay on until 2030 when his second term expires in 2028.
Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga and his military-backed faction have forced Mnangagwa to drop his third term plan and reconfigure their power retention calculations.
Chiwenga is anxious to take over from Mnangagwa after he was duped during the coup that he could come in after 2023 as the President was going to run for a term.
Instead of risking a complicated third term bid, Mnangagwa is said to now prefer a two-year extension from 2028, hence the current divisive Zanu PF mantra "2030 vaMnangagwa vanenge vachipo".
In the process of making some changes, Mnangagwa demoted Mike Bimha as party secretary for commissariat.
Bimha was appointed secretary for commissariat after Victor Matematanda was deployed to Mozambique as ambassador.
Matematanda had replaced retired Lieutenant-General Engelbert Rugeje in that post.
There were tensions between Mnangagwa and Chiwenga over those appointments.
To replace Bimha, Mnangagwa appointed party ideologue retired Brigadier-General Munyaradzi Machacha.
Machacha was Hebert Chitepo School of Ideology principal and party director of publications.
Nicknamed George Kashiri during the liberation struggle, Machacha, a political ally of Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga, was the liaison officer at Foxtrot Assembly Point in Buhera, Manicaland, in 1980 soon after the liberation struggle.
He was a board member of Chinese and army diamond company Anjin Investments.
Machacha was involved in the 2013 constitution-making process.
He will be responsible for party mobilisation of key grassroots support for the party ravaged by factionalism and a shrinking social base.
Machacha will be crucial in Chiwenga's succession bid.
The Zanu PF leader also further rewarded another veteran ally Jacob Mudenda, who is also Speaker of the National Assembly, by making him Treasurer-General of the party.
Mudenda played a key role in the 2017 military coup which ousted Mugabe, but had not been significantly rewarded for his effort.
These changes come after Mnangagwa made a failed bid to appoint Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander General Phillip Valerio Sibanda into the politburo last December.
Mnangagwa wanted Sibanda to checkmate Chiwenga in the current power matrix and get a third term or two more years in charge.
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