Lloyd Gumbo Herald Reporter
ZANU-PF will purge officials accused of fanning factionalism in the disbanded District

Co-ordinating Committees as the party intensifies its bid to bring sanity in its ranks, senior party officials said yesterday.

Briefing Zanu-PF Harare provincial leadership on the reasons behind the abolition of DCCs yesterday, party Secretary for Administration, Cde Didymus Mutasa, said there would be no sacred cows.
Zanu-PF national political commissar, Cde Webster Shamu, and party spokesperson Cde Rugare Gumbo, also attended the meeting.

“You have to stop the tendency of using DCCs for bad things because Zanu-PF is developing teeth.
“It doesn’t matter what position you hold in the party. (Edgar) Tekere and (Ndabaningi) Sithole were fired from the party yet they held senior positions. You can also be expelled if you do wrong things,” he said.

Cde Mutasa warned the leadership from engaging in factionalism saying those found on the wrong side would be removed.

Cde Mutasa and Cde Shamu have been touring all the country’s provinces explaining the disbanding of the DCCs.

Harare province was their last port of call.
Findings from the tour will be presented to the Politburo tomorrow.

Giving an overall outline of the tour, Zanu-PF national spokesperson, Cde Gumbo, said no stone would be left unturned in uprooting factionalism.
He said the party leadership was aware of the seriousness of divisions that threatened the fabric of unity within the party hence the decision to disband the DCCs.
“We are going to follow up on everyone who has been leading these things (factionalism).

“We have already been briefed and these people are known. All we want is to make sure we are factual about what they have been doing. We are determined to unravel this factionalism,” Cde Gumbo said.

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He said some DCCs’ members had become kingmakers in determining who was supposed to be in leadership.
“One could not get to the other structures of the party without going through the DCCs. They had created themselves as the executive and sometimes with the audacity to claim that they were Politburo members than  (the)real Politburo. They would say that they had power to influence who should be in leadership,” Cde Gumbo said.

He said leadership from all the provinces, except the Midlands, had openly welcomed the dissolving of DCCs.
“The Midlands Province was the only one which had problems with people who are even in the Central Committee, questioning the decision to dissolve the DCCs,” Cde Gumbo said.

President Mugabe, who is the party’s President and First Secretary, recently announced the Politburo decision to disband the DCCs at a Central Committee meeting. The Central Committee has since endorsed the decision to do away with the DCCs.
Some powerful Zanu-PF members were allegedly manipulating the DCCs, causing unnecessary tension and divisions in the ranks.