The former Deputy Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Energy Mutodi was reportedly fired at Foreign Affairs Minister Sibusiso Moyo’s behest, a development insiders said was a result of the internecine factionalism within the ruling party and divisions in the goverment.
Mutodi reportedly belongs to a faction backing Vice President Constantino Chiwenga while Moyo is in President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s camp.
Moyo reportedly met Mnangagwa just before last week’s cabinet meeting and threatened to resign if Mutodi was not sacked. The Independent quotes its source as saying:
There is a reconfiguration of factions going on in the party and Mutodi was seen as pushing Chiwenga’s agenda. Moyo is firmly in Mnangagwa’s camp and so when Mutodi attacked him, he probably didn’t realise he was attacking the nerve centre of power.
So Moyo, just before the cabinet meeting last week, sought audience with the President and expressed his reservations about the continued presence of Mutodi in government.
He indicated that if Mutodi was to remain in government, then he would have to resign himself in protest. So basically that decision was purely factional, given Moyo’s significance in the scheme of things going forward.
Mnangagwa summarily sacked Mutodi after a public spat with Moyo, with the Goromonzi West MP having seemingly mocked Tanzania President John Magufuli for his response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Moyo chided Mutodi for his remarks, whereupon the latter penned a two-page letter in which he lashed out at the former, accusing him of behaving like a prime minister when the country’s constitution does not provide for such a position.
Mutodi was fired days later, a few hours after he mocked three female MDC Alliance activists who had allegedly been s_xually abused by unknown gunmen.