By Staff Reporter
Vice President General Constantino Chiwenga electrified the ZANUPF Annual National People’s Conference in Chinhoyi with a bold public challenge to both his party and its leader, thrusting the ruling party’s internal divisions into the national spotlight.
Standing before an audience of party faithful and senior leaders, Chiwenga did not shy away from invoking the momentous events of 2017. He asked, pointedly, whether the Second Republic—established through a military coup to end Robert Mugabe’s decades-long rule—was already at risk of repeating the very mistakes that brought about its own birth.
Direct in his approach, Chiwenga confronted the dangers of authoritarianism and exclusion festering within ZANUPF. “Are we not making the very errors that forced us to act in 2017?” he demanded, daring the party’s elite to confront uncomfortable truths about their current direction and claim to renewal. His speech, couched as a call for self-examination, was also a veiled warning against repeating a history marred by leaders disconnected from the people they serve.
The vice president’s remarks come amid a fierce and public succession battle at the top of Zimbabwe’s political hierarchy. President Mnangagwa’s moves to amend the constitution, extend his tenure, and elevate Senator Kudakwashe Tagwirei as a possible successor, have been widely interpreted as a strategy to sideline opponents—and Chiwenga in particular. This escalating power play recently erupted in party infighting so intense that it derailed a scheduled Politburo meeting, laying bare fractures at the highest levels of ZANUPF.
Through his address, Chiwenga cast the current struggle as a fight between genuine people’s power and self-serving elites: between a party loyal to its grassroots and one that risks becoming merely a tool for personal ambition. Political observers warn that the stakes are unprecedented. Whether President Mnangagwa chooses to heed Chiwenga’s challenge or attempts to silence him may ultimately decide not only the fate of Zimbabwe’s ruling party, but the course of the nation’s democracy itself.
Chiwenga’s fierce questions now echo far beyond the walls of the conference hall, signaling that both ZANUPF’s future—and that of Zimbabwe—hang in the balance.
