The Sunday Mail
Retired Major Action Mandingo
OVER the past few years, the country’s prophets of doom have been trying to drive a wedge between President Mnangagwa and Vice President Chiwenga.
Of course, some of us who are in the know always laugh at futile attempts to divide the two.
President Mnangagwa and VP Chiwenga cannot, and will not, be separated by fictitious stories in the media.
Operation Restore Legacy was engineered in November 2017 by the then army commander, General Chiwenga, and led to the resignation of former President Mugabe.
It ushered in the Second Republic under the leadership of President Mnangagwa.
As the country marches towards the forthcoming elections, lies about a rift between President Mnangagwa and VP Chiwenga will again be amplified.
Gullible journalists will continue flogging a dead horse by writing front-page stories alleging that the two leaders are at each other’s throats.
“He is part of me and I am part of him.” While the prophets of doom can continue hallucinating, VP Chiwenga has, for the first time, come out in the open to talk about the “blood bond” he shares with President Mnangagwa.
As we all know, blood is thicker than water.
A few days ago, I came across VP Chiwenga’s wide-ranging interview in “The Third Eye” magazine, and his views on his relationship with President Mnangagwa really showed that the two are inseparable comrades.
During the liberation struggle, we would say President Mnangagwa and VP Chiwenga ishamwari dzeropa.
In the interview with internationally acclaimed veteran journalist Baffour Ankomah — conducted on December 22 last year, together with veteran journalist Munyaradzi Huni, who is deputy editor of the magazine — VP Chiwenga, without mincing his words, said: “One thing you have to understand here is that President Mnangagwa has my blood and I have his blood. It will never change . . . We are bound together. So, he is part of me and I am part of him . . .
“President Mnangagwa and I are one. He has my blood and I have his blood . . . As I am speaking here, if you go to the President, you would think that I have phoned him to give the same answers, sometimes word for word or almost word for word. And wherever we are, we think alike, and we move as one — one step, two steps, one step, two steps. We have been doing that.”
Now this is deep and profound.
There is conviction and sincerity in VP Chiwenga’s statements. The VP added that his friendship with President Mnangagwa dates back to the days of the liberation struggle.
He said he and President Mnangagwa had been working together as far back as when President Mnangagwa joined the liberation war from prison in 1975.
“We are one, very solid”
Added VP Chiwenga: “We worked as a team. Very solid! Whatever we did, we planned it, and it was executed . . . We were one, very solid. And if you wanted to report to the President (Mugabe who was at the time the leader of ZANU), you went through his personal assistant, who is now our current President, Mnangagwa. We were one. So, we were bound as one . . . And one thing you have to understand here, he has my blood and I have his blood. It will never change.”
As he spoke, VP Chiwenga illustrated his points by waving his clenched fists to show that he meant what he was saying.
When Ankomah and Huni asked VP Chiwenga to explain what he meant when he said “he has my blood and I have his blood”, he said: “We are bound together. So, he is part of me and I am part of him.”
Still not able to believe what they had just heard, “The Third Eye” editors tried another tact by reminding the Vice President of his long friendship with President Mnangagwa and how it had impacted their lives and work.
“You and President Mnangagwa go back a very long time,” the editors told the Vice President.
“You were friends during the liberation war and have been friends after the liberation war. Patrick Smith, the editor of ‘Africa Confidential’ and ‘The Africa Report’ in London, once told the BBC that you and the President are ‘joined at the hip’, with Mnangagwa the senior partner. Was he correct to say that?”
VP Chiwenga laughed heartily as he responded to the question.
“I don’t know what he was referring to . . . but, as I said earlier, President Mnangagwa has my blood and I have his blood. We are one, not joined at the hip; in fact, that was not the correct description. We are one.”
When the editors asked VP Chiwenga why there was a perception of rivalry between him and President Mnangagwa, he responded by saying: “Aaah, 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 the right? The individual still remains one whole body. So, there are so 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 has put on the social media today?’”
The editors probed him to explain what he meant and he added: “Yes, we talk about it. When we sit down, we ask, ‘what nonsense is this?’ But it does not perturb us. We have a mission to fulfil, this is what is important, so let them bark and do whatever.
“We now have some 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.”
Of course, out of desperation, the prophets of doom and their gullible journalists will continue cooking up stories about the rift between President Mnangagwa and VP Chiwenga, but the statements above clearly show that the two are entwined comrades-in-arms.
They are like conjoined twins.
By the way, once a commander always a commander!
And, by the way, the commander in VP Chiwenga never dies, and, as we go for the elections, those dreaming of regime change in Zimbabwe should not only forget about it, but be warned.
When the West, led by the UK and the US, cranked up pressure to effect regime change in Zimbabwe after the historic land reform programme, VP Chiwenga was still Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, and, as he spoke to “The Third Eye”, he showed that the commander in him never dies.
When the editors asked him whether, as commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, he was prepared to defend Zimbabwe, the commander in him popped up.
“Very much so,” he thundered.
“We were aware that the British had amassed their troops in the Indian Ocean during the time of the Tony Blair regime. We were aware that they were all ready to come and pounce on this country. Yes, they could have destroyed this concrete junk; I was very aware of that.
“That this concrete junk could go. But what they could never destroy was the revolutionary spirit of the Zimbabwean people. And whoever landed in this country, would never go back alive. I think we can end it there and leave the rest for the future.”
Indeed, let us end here and leave the rest to the future!
