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Nobleman Runyanga-Herald Correspondent 

The Sunday Mail recently published an article in which President Mnangagwa pronounced himself on the opposition-created false narrative that he was pushing for a third term in office.

Since the August 23 elections, the opposition and its support system which is made up of some private media players and civil society organisations have been baselessly speculating that the President would use ZANU PF’s majority in Parliament to set in motion the process of amending the Constitution to enable him to get a third term in office. 

After months of excited speculation by the opposition and other detractors, President Mnangagwa has shamed those who sought to improve the opposition’s chances of unseating ZANU PF through sowing discord and conflict at its top.

The President unequivocally stated that he had no intentions to disregard the Constitution by running for a third term. 

This is not surprising. 

He leads a political party which has a constitution in place which its members have been dutifully respecting since 1963. This contradicts sharply with those who were driving the negative narrative on behalf of an opposition political party which does not believe in sound ideologies and constitutions. 

The baseless speculation became frenzied when some ZANU PF members chanted the slogan: “2030 VaMnangagwa vanenge vachipo” during the 2024 Robert Gabriel Mugabe National Youth Day at Mushagashe Vocational Training College in February this year. 

In my chiManyika language if someone asks: “Nhingi uchiyo here?” It simply means: “Is so and so still alive?” Similarly, stating that the President will be alive in 2030 has nothing to do with his office. 

It was simply a prayer for long life for the President which was hijacked by his detractors who were desperate for anything to use to buttress their third term narrative.

Their ultimate aim was throwing ZANU PF off its focus of serving Zimbabweans and lose power in the process. 

The prayer was not lost to the President. This is why he responded by invoking God and his power as the sole giver and protector of life. He said “Kunongova nemunhu one anoziva kuti ndinoenda rinhi, ndiJehovah.” 

Detractor media players were excited and quick to link the word kuenda with his office in their desperate wish to nourish their narrative of a third term that never was.

 In an editorial published on April 9, the NewsDay shamelessly claimed that the President’s response meant that “he was here to stay and only God knew when he would vacate office.” What a shameless lie. 

The President simply meant that only God knows how long his life would be.

He never spoke about his stay in office because this is clearly spelt out in the national charter, the Constitution. 

Given how his various opponents sought to misinterpret him to advance their owners and funders’ imperialistic designs for Zimbabwe and the region, the President used an interview that he granted to Brick by Brick magazine editors, Munyaradzi Huni and Baffour Ankomah to unequivocally clear the air and put the non-existent third term bid issue to rest for ever. 

He submitted that neither him nor ZANU PF would breach the Constitution in pursuit of a third term in office. 

The President said “there is not an iota of evidence where ZANU PF or I, as President, has ever expressed the violation of our Constitution. But we allow people to dream properly or widely. They will still wake up and find (that) things are working and the Constitution hasn’t changed.” 

President Mnangagwa reaffirmed the party and his own commitment to respecting the Constitution, thereby bursting the third term bubble which some self-hating Zimbabweans were clinging to, like life itself in the hope of landing power by causing disunity in ZANU PF.

While the NewsDay and other like-minded players in the media were being used to peddle the third term narrative, other private media players such as the Soros-funded News Hawks, which over time has proved to be news hoax, were being used by the West as hatchet men to aid the opposition’s bid for power by manufacturing a non-existent conflict between the President and Vice President (VP) Dr Constantino Chiwenga over a non-existent third term bid. 

When the VP wedded his wife in December last year, the publication was on steroids coming up with all manner of conspiracies and out-of-this-world speculation to convince the world that the VP was plotting to unseat his principal. 

The publication claimed without evidence that the fact that former Namibian Defence Force chief, Denga Ndaitwah was his best man at the wedding meant that the VP was mobilising regional alliances in preparation to replace President Mnangagwa but this was not true. 

The VP has always pledged his allegiance to the President in both word and deed. 

Zimbabwe is a democratic country where citizens, the VP included, have the right to association. 

Surely, the VP did not participate in the gruelling liberation struggle and serve in the Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) for 37 years only to have his choice of a best man dictated to him by a Western-backed publication. 

In 2022, the VP described the close relations between him and the President in blood terms during an interview.  

He said “President Mnangagwa and I are one. He has my blood and I have his blood.” No relationship is stronger than blood ties. Not even malicious rumour and speculation from Western running dogs in our midst can undo the unity between the two leaders.

What motivates and fuels people like those who run some private media houses to fight against the President and ZANU PF is not only the limitless amounts of the dirty dollar from the West, but also the frustration that comes with supporting a tactless opposition whose leaders stupidly think that claims of popularity is an election strategy. 

The fact that President Mnangagwa’s detractors have failed dismally to unseat ZANU PF by driving a divisive wedge between him and the VP demonstrates the hare-brained nature of the West’s regime change strategies.

It proves that the West has more money than working brains. The VP is not some latter day Morrison Nyathi or Moise Tshombe who could be lured by filthy Western lucre to fight against their own people.

He is grounded in the liberation ethos and his commitment to maintaining unity in ZANU PF is not questionable. 

The President’s pronouncement has shamed his detractors. 

It has disarmed the opposition and its backers who, due to lack of sound strategies, had come to rely on their own propaganda to fight ZANU PF. 

They created a non-existent third term bid on the part of the President and a baseless claim of the VP planning to unseat him and believed their own lies. 

With their cover blown, they have been exposed. One wonders what these private media houses will now survive on for content given that their staple has been taken away from them. 

With the President speaking by himself that the third term bid story was false, detractors cannot continue to sell the blatant lies anymore. 

This has exposed these media houses’ desperations. 

They were prepared to rely on a lie instead of properly advising the opposition which they sought to prop up. 

What can one say of their sharp but baseless criticism of President Mnangagwa’s victory both in 2018 and 2023 instead of advising their horse, Nelson Chamisa out of his ill-thought out and ill-fated “strategic ambiguity” self-delusion if he was to fare better than the President? 

If the West has not learnt anything about the poor calibre of its running opposition leaders in Zimbabwe from this incident, it will never learn anything. It will continue to fund clueless people in the desperate hope of getting different results. Insanity, the late German physicist, Albert Einstein, called it. 

But who cares when one’s opponent shoots himself in the foot?