(HERALD) Report on President, service chiefs rift wishful thinking

Report on President, service chiefs rift wishful thinking
Herald Reporter
Monday, 02 May 2011 22:31


President Mugabe being welcomed home by services chiefs — (from right) Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces General Constantine Chiwenga, Major General Trust Mugoba, Air Marshal Perrance Shiri and ZRP Commissioner General Augustine Chihuri — on his return from Italy at the Harare International Airport yesterday.

THE Government has dismissed reports in a local Sunday paper, the Standard, that service chiefs had demanded that President Mugabe should defer elections and immediately appoint a successor.

The paper quoted unnamed sources claiming that President Mugabe and the security chiefs held a teleconference last week, when the President was in Singapore, where the President was told to tone down on talk of having an election this year and to choose his successor, which they would support.

Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa described the report as "nonsense and rubbish".
In an interview with ZBC, Cde Mnangagwa said the report was mere politicking by the private media and their western sponsors.

Asked to comment, the director of Urban Communications in the Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity, Retired Major Anyway Mutambudzi, described the claim by the paper as "wishful thinking on their part".

He said: "I am a retired soldier and I am fully aware of security protocol. In the first place there was no way service chiefs could choose to discuss such a State security issue over the phone when they had access to the President in the Joint Operations Command meetings.

"It shows that the person who formulated the story is a civilian who is not aware of statecraft and how the security system works."

Retired Major Mutambudzi described the story as a "pack of lies designed to destabilise Zanu PF and the government of Zimbabwe".

He said state security matters, such as the one referred to by the paper, could only be dealt with through face to face communication and not an international platform of a teleconference.

That alone, eroded the credibility of the story and proved it to be false.
"It's not true, such a thing could never happen," he said.