FORMER National Healing co-minister Moses Mzila Ndlovu’s party has launched a savage attack on Joice Mujuru following her denials she was complicit with the Zanu PF regime’s killing of civilians when she still served in President Robert Mugabe’s government.
Mujuru was cabinet minister and later deputy to President Mugabe before her shock ouster 2014 over an alleged plot to dethrone the veteran leader, charges she continues to deny.
When she still served in government, Zimbabwe saw the massacre of an estimated 20,000 civilians in Matebeleland and Midlands provinces in the early years of independence.
This would be followed with a massive destruction of homes under government’s ostensible attempt to drive out filth in major cities 2005.
The opposition MDC-T further claims more than 200 of its supporters were butchered during the violence that preceded the 2008 presidential run-off poll following President Mugabe’s shock defeat earlier to arch-rival Morgan Tsvangirai of MDC-T.
During the period, Mujuru was ensconced in her comfortable positions as a top government official.
Asked during a BBC Hard Talk interview last week if she was part of citizens’ victimisation, the now opposition National People’s Party interim leader pleaded her innocence, insisting she was only a passive member of a violent and corrupt system.
But the newly formed pro-Matebeleland opposition, Alliance for National Salvation (ANSA), would not allow President Mugabe’s one time lieutenant to get away with murder.
“She claims dictates of collective decision making bound or bind her to side with the system’s decision. What a shame!” party spokesperson Mangoye Dlamini wrote in a statement.
“She has the audacity to claim that her approach was to change things from within – this is the most absurd thinking I have heard from someone who believes she can lead the country.”
Added the new party, “She should tell the nation that she fully supported the decisions taken with regards to Murambatsvina, and be brave enough to live with it.
“If then she wants to apologise, she should do so openly – without offering any excuses.”
Dlamini said cabinet ministers were decision makers as opposed to robots which simply took orders without weighing how moral they were.
“It is not a question of whether it is ‘my father or mother’; if the decision is to kill one has to stand up and take anon- ambiguous stance because there is always a tomorrow.
“Blind loyalty to fatherly figures should be limited to a certain age group that could be gullible by virtue of young age, not old and mature men and women.”
ANSA said Mujuru could have been more credible if she had voluntarily left a corrupt government in line with her assumed principles as opposed to waiting to be bundled out.
“She should just be woman enough and face the fact that she was part of this national destruction policy for too long to just escape through pathetically low intellectual level responses in the interview,” Dlamini said.
Since she launched her political ambitions last year, Mujuru has toured parts of the country to look for support with some of her stops in the restive Matebeleland regions.
But ANSA said Mujuru should not fool herself into believing people from the regions have forgiven her for her role in the killing of their relatives.
“She is just an opportunist, a great one. People of this nation deserve better leadership,” said the party.