ZANU PF spokesperson, Ambassador Christopher Mutsvangwa said they protected Zimbabwe’s founding leader, the late Robert Mugabe from persecution from the “country’s enemies” and later “dealt with” him in “a very surgical manner.”
Mugabe who resigned in 2017 after the citizenry marched demanding his ouster, later claimed that year that he resigned under duress amid reports that the army had him under house arrest.
Just before Mugabe resigned, the late Morgan Tsvangirai, a former Prime Minister (2009 to 2013) and former leader of the opposition MDC addressed thousands of people gathered outside the Parliament building where he urged Mugabe to “step down immediately to avoid impeachment”.
Mugabe resigned before he was impeached.
Zanu-PF spokesperson Christopher Mutsvangwa on Thursday told HStv, a digital television station run by Alpha Media Holdings that Tsvangirai played a crucial role in President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s ascendancy. He said:
We kept Mugabe in office when the threat was from the West. You do not open your armpits when the enemy is at the gate. So when we saw that there was a chance to deal with Mugabe we dealt with Mugabe in a very surgical manner where even themselves (opposition) became part of that process.
We built a broad, united front and it is also to their credit that for a change there was wisdom just that the wisdom died with the demise of Tsvangirai then afterwards the party was afflicted with its usual falling to the Western countries.
At the time, Tsvangirai is alleged to have lobbied Western diplomats to play down Mugabe’s ouster, which he described as a citizens’ doing, and embrace Mnangagwa.
Tsvangirai succumbed to cancer of the colon in South Africa in February 2018.
More: NewsDay Zimbabwe