Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa effectively dismantled a trio within Zanu-PF\u2019s Youth League that had become powerful enough to attack his business and political benefactors.<\/p>\n
At the party\u2019s politburo meeting on Wednesday, secretary for youth affairs Pupurai Togarepi, his vocal deputy Lewis Matutu and secretary for the commissariat Godfrey Tsenengamu were reduced to ordinary card-carrying party members. They will be grounded for a year. After that they can contest for any party position.<\/p>\n
Their transgression, according to the party\u2019s acting spokesperson Patrick Chinamasa, was \u201ctheir irregular modus operandi which is alien to the party\u2019s way of doing its business\u201d.<\/p>\n
When the three went on their latest anti-corruption crusade they called for the arrest of a member of the president\u2019s advisory committee and benefactor, Kudakwashe Tagwirei, and another key ally to the presidium, Billy Rautenbach.<\/p>\n
Tagwirei enjoys a monopoly in the fuel industry. He is also the main player in the Command Agriculture programme that has since its inception in 2016 gobbled more than US$3bn of state funds. Matutu called Tagwirei, \u201cthe most corrupt person in the country\u201d at a media conference on Monday. In 2018 the same accusation was made against Tagwirei by Christopher Mutsvangwa, who was later dropped as presidential adviser.<\/p>\n
This was the youth league\u2019s second attempt at getting those alleged to be corrupt brought to book. In their first effort last year, they named senior party members such as secretary for administration Obert Mpofu. At the time Mpofu was not amused and he almost physically charged at Matutu during a politburo meeting. Mpofu later sued Matutu for ZWL$10m \u2014 the matter is yet to be heard in court.<\/p>\n
The trio knew they could land in trouble with their latest attempt to speak out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have prepared ourselves for this, whatever the consequences we don\u2019t care, we don\u2019t mind, but the message has been sent,\u201d Matutu said.<\/p>\n
Reacting to their expulsion MDC Alliance politician Fadzayi Mahere tweeted: \u201cThe godfather of corruption in Zimbabwe came out in full defence of his godson (Tagwirei) yesterday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa effectively dismantled a trio within Zanu-PF\u2019s Youth League that had become powerful enough to attack his business and political benefactors. At the party\u2019s politburo meeting on Wednesday, secretary for youth affairs Pupurai Togarepi, his vocal deputy Lewis Matutu and secretary for the commissariat Godfrey Tsenengamu were reduced to ordinary card-carrying party […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":19114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[38,31,1306],"class_list":["post-19112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-policy","tag-zanu-pf","tag-mnangagwa","tag-tagwirei"],"yoast_head":"\n