HARARE - The relationship between the head of an organisation and his subordinates is predicated on trust.
This concept is applicable to a head of state and government and his ministers. President Robert Mugabe’s public excoriation of his Information minister Jonathan Moyo indicates that such trust in his minister does not exist.
Mugabe traduced Moyo for being counter-revolutionary, seeking to destroy the party from within and for employing journalists who were once fierce critics of Zanu PF.
Mugabe’s comments echo his Vice-President Mujuru’s remarks, weeks earlier, seen as directed at Moyo after the minister’s prominent criticism of corruption in parastatals.
“There are people who know the role parastatals play towards holding the country together, who would want to fight them and destroy our party and government in the process.
“These people cannot be Zanu PF. They say if you cannot beat them join them and fight from within. So beware.”
Mujuru would probably have harboured a lasting vendetta against Moyo after his alleged involvement in the so-called Tsholotsho Declaration of 2003 widely believed to have been designed to torpedo her chances of securing Vice Presidency in favour of said rival Emmerson Mnangagwa.
The fact that Mugabe and Mujuru — two of the Zanu PF’s most powerful figures — would make such remarks means Moyo’s political career with the party is precarious.
When it comes to Moyo, Mugabe oozes derogatory imagery. He believes Moyo harbours a sinister agenda of the “devil incarnate” and is a “weevil” burrowing through fabric of his party.
Mugabe once described Moyo as hard-headed (musoro unenge damba) after failing to convince him to step down and allow the Zanu PF Politburo to nominate a candidate for Tsholotsho constituency in 2005.
Mugabe expelled him from the party and cabinet. Moyo had served as minister of Information since 2000. In defiance, he stood as an independent in 2005 and again in 2008, winning the Tsholotsho seat on both occasions.
Before the 2008 poll, Moyo said Mugabe “would lose to a donkey in a free and fair election.”
He, however, rejoined Zanu PF and he was credited with crafting ZimAsset — the Zanu PF manifesto for the 2013 election and the economic turnaround strategy.
Moyo then lost the Tsholotsho seat in the last elections. Nonetheless, Mugabe reappointed him as Information minister.
Since then, Moyo, once the nemesis of the privately-owned media, has adopted a changed approach; he has been conciliatory and met media across the editorial and ownership divide.
His recent criticism of the police for banning journalists’ World
Press Freedom Day march was remarkable.
State media reporting became forthrightly but refreshingly uncharacteristic on occasions; Didymus Mutasa was once described as “a dwarf in huge robes” and recently, the bold proclamation that the government had made a climb-down on indigenisation.
Zanu PF became increasingly uneasy. Mugabe has accused Moyo of using the state-run media to pursue his own agenda.
No doubt some ministers and Zanu PF officials have been briefing against him to Mugabe
Moyo’s future in Zanu PF is, thus, uncertain. His position is
untenable. It does not appear he will ever earn full trust in Zanu PF.
Mugabe recognises Moyo as an efficient operator — the reason he has appointed him minister twice — but how Moyo might use his intellect petrifies him.
Both Mugabe and Moyo have decisions to make; the former on whether or, in fact, why he should keep someone he clearly says he does not trust, and the latter, on whether he can work in an environment in which he does not enjoy the trust of his boss and colleagues.
The problem for Moyo is that Mugabe has made it his pre-retirement mission to leave his party intact. It is unlikely he will brook any disruption of such an important legacy to him.
Moyo would have to either jump before he is pushed or, if Mugabe keeps him, he would just become an inefficient dud walking on egg shells.
Or a reshuffle would see him shunted at the Psychomotor ministry.