VICE-President Emmerson Mnangagwa allegedly told Higher Education minister Jonathan Moyo during a heated Zanu PF politburo meeting that they used to kill trouble makers like him during the war, it has emerged.
Mnangagwa allegedly made the chilling warning soon after Moyo presented alleged video evidence that the VP was plotting to topple President Robert Mugabe.
The minister last month stunned the Zanu PF politburo when he accused the veteran politician of capturing state institutions and working with ruling party renegades in the alleged plot to oust the president.
According to a letter Moyo wrote to Zanu PF secretary for administration Ignatius Chombo, the Tsholotsho North MP said he interpreted Mnangagwa’s statement to mean he was threatening him with murder.
“After my presentation, Cde Mnangagwa made a shocking statement to the effect that while he was in Mozambique, during the liberation struggle, people who made interventions such as my presentation to the politburo on 19 July would have ‘their head separated from their shoulders’,” Moyo wrote in the letter dated August 9.
“The full import of Cde Mnangagwa’s statement did not visit me until after the politburo meeting, especially when other politburo members asked me about it.
“Separating a head from a person’s shoulders is tantamount to murder.
“The effect of Cde Mnangagwa’s statement was to threaten me with murder and I wish to place this on record and request your office to take the matter under review and to do the needful about it given the serious implications of the unlawful threat.”
Moyo was responding to another letter by Chombo on July 24 where he was informed of Mnangagwa’s request for materials used in the onslaught against him during the politburo meeting of July 19.
The material included the video detailing the VP’s alleged document, a document titled Blue Ocean, which was linked to war veterans that demanded that Mugabe must hand power to his deputy and a copy of Britain’s New Statesmen magazine that carried an interview with Mnangagwa.
Moyo described Mnangagwa’s alleged statements as “badly unacceptable” and wanted them to be placed on record.
In the letter to Chombo, he also demanded a dossier that Mnangagwa allegedly waved at the politburo meeting, saying it proved the minister was an agent of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Moyo claimed that although Mnangagwa had all the time to present his dossier, he only brandished it in the politburo claiming it linked him to the CIA.
“Cde Mnangagwa waved a document following my presentation and claimed it was a dossier he and others he did not name had prepared in anticipation of my presentation to ‘show that I am a CIA agent’,” the letter added.
“Although he had brought the document to the politburo, he did not have the courage to present it on the day or to share it with me and yet he made gratuitous insults supposedly based on the document that I and others associated with me are ‘CIA spies’.
“In the circumstance and particularly in view of the fact that Cde Mnangagwa waved, in the politburo, the document which he said was a dossier on me, I request that I be favoured with a copy of that document ahead of the politburo meeting to enable me to make proper and full response to the allegations in the document.”
Mnangagwa is expected to present his defence in the next politburo meeting.
The two have been at each other’s throats for some time now, with Moyo accusing Mnangagwa of leading a faction that is angling for Mugabe’s position.
The VP has on numerous ocassions been forced to publicly deny allegations that he harbours presidential ambitions and has become impatient to move to State House.
Standard