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Political Editor

PRESIDENT Mnangagwa and his deputy, Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, are “bound by blood” and often laugh off “idiots” who try to sow divisions between them by alleging a non-existent rivalry.

In an interview with the Third Eye magazine, Vice President Chiwenga scoffed at speculation that he is out to undo the remarkable works of President Mnangagwa, saying he will always work for and with his boss for the good of the country.

The VP said there are some people who spawn non-existent shadows just to cause divisions in the top echelons of power, but was unequivocal that in his case with the President, the relationship is unbreakable.

Vice President Chiwenga recalled how President Mnangagwa and five other liberation stalwarts, namely General Josiah Tongogara, General Solomon Mujuru, General Vitalis Zvinavashe, and Air Chief Marshal Josiah Tungamirai (all late), worked as a solid team bound together by blood during the liberation struggle, relations which persist to this date, despite the passage of time and death of some.

President Mnangagwa is the only surviving member among the crop of liberation war icons,  brave men and women who were resolutely focused and went through unimaginable perils to liberate the country from colonial bondage, threats which still exist to date as erstwhile colonisers sponsor dissent in the country.

“We were one, very solid. And if you wanted to report to the President (the late Cde Robert Mugabe) you went through the personal assistant who is now our current President. So we were bound as one.

“And out of that team, there are only two remaining — myself and President Mnangagwa. And one thing you have to understand here is that he has my blood and I have his blood. It will never change.”

Asked to clarify his statement, VP Chiwenga said: “We are bound together. So he is part of me and I am part of him.”

While some have said the President and his deputy are joined at the hip, VP Chiwenga said their relationship, soldered through blood and iron, goes further than that.

“We are one, not joined in the hip, in fact that was not the correct description. We are one. As I am speaking here, if you go to the President, you would think that I have phoned him to give you the same answers, sometimes word for word. And wherever we are, we think alike, we move as one — one step, two steps, one step, two steps, we have been doing that.”

But then there is wild speculation, yet unfounded, that there is a rivalry between the two, especially in the so-called private media.

Not a grain of truth though, the VP said, tracing that to tactics of the country’s detractors and political loafers who want to sow discord in the Presidium.

“It’s part of the regime change agenda. Have you ever heard the saying ‘divide and rule’? Now how do you divide or dissect one person and say this is now the left side and this is now the right? The individual still remains one whole body. So there are many things that have been said. And we don’t even worry about them. We laugh at them and ask ourselves, ‘have you seen what some idiot put on social media today?’”

Regardless of the social media’s brazen falsehoods and sideshows, VP Chiwenga said the two have a mission to fulfil.

“This is what is important. We have a mission to fulfil, so let them bark and do whatever. We now have people who are not themselves, who cannot exist on their own. They must exist in the shadows of other people, so that if they say they are supporting this man, they are now called human beings. Shame. One must stand on his own,” he said.

Part of that mission is being implemented with remarkable ease by President Mnangagwa who has in little over four years turned around the country’s fortunes in the agriculture sector where a bumper harvest was recorded, with the country having enough wheat to spare.

Notwithstanding that progress, which also finds expression in roads and dams that are being constructed while key sectors of the economy such as mining have surpassed expectations, some choose to bury their heads in the sand.

“The President is going to be elected unanimously by the people of Zimbabwe to show the confidence they have in him. What he has done is there for everyone to see, it’s not about saying we are going to do this or that, we have already done it already. So it’s no longer an issue of ‘we are going to build the Gwayi Shangani Dam’, it’s there to see, ‘we are going to increase the power supply’, Hwange 7 and eight are there,”  said VP Chiwenga.