Harare – Late Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe’s justice minister, Happyton Bonyongwe wanted to arrest army generals before the military executed a coup, ZANU PF spokesman Christopher Mutsvangwa said on Tuesday.
Mutsvangwa told a press conference that Bonyongwe, a former Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) director general worked with Mugabe to arrest army generals that included the then Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) commander, Constantino Chiwenga and his deputy Valerio Sibanda among other top soldiers.
However, the army reacted swiftly and executed a coup on November 15 that removed Mugabe from power.
Mutsvangwa was responding to questions from journalists at the ZANU PF headquarters on why the army executed a coup in November 2017.
”The reason why the president Mugabe had to be removed is very clear. Along the way he had decided to create dynasty out of this country,” Mutsvangwa said.
”He had turned his house, his household into a courthouse of intrigue.”
”His appointed Minister of Justice Happyton Bonyongwe decides to change the Zimbabwean army by imprisoning all the Generals.”
Mutsvangwa said Robert Mugabe had planned to have his wife Grace take power after he leaves office.
”Mugabe was saying my wife will become the Queen when I am gone. She (Grace) was saying his (Robert Mugabe) ghost will rule from the grave. What sane country tolerate that kind of nonsense, moreso a country which went through the pains of a very terrible war to restore it’s identity,” Mutsvangwa said.
He said ZANU PF history even before independence shows that whenever a leader goes against the party’s ethoes, he/she is removed from the position of power.
”Whenever the leader becomes bigger than the revolution we deal with him because that is the tradition of ZANU PF,” Mutsvangwa said.
”In the end we showed him (Robert Mugabe) who mattered – the people of Zimbabwe and the state apparatus matter more than any individual. Because the people of Zimbabwe and their state apparatus are born of the crucible of the armed struggle which made each family lose a member, each family in Zimbabwe lost somebody from that generation.”
Happyton Bonyongwe once removed from office in 2017 has maintained a quite life but last year he published his memoirs – One Among Many which shares his side of the story of what transpired towards the military coup.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa is facing resistance within ZANU PF of his close associates’ plans to extend his rule to 2030.
Mnangagwa has said he will not rule beyond the end of his second term in 2028 but party officials and supporters have been calling that he extends his rule to 2030 through an amendment of the constitution.
War veteran Blessed Geza who is in hiding has said that a faction within ZANU PF will block attempts to extend Mnangagwa’s rule to 2030.