Former Finance Minister Tendai Biti says plans by ZANU PF to separate the party presidency from the national presidency show that the party’s liberation movement credentials are finished.
Biti’s remarks come after reports that President Emmerson Mnangagwa cancelled an extraordinary ZANU PF politburo meeting last Friday following clashes over proposed amendments to the party constitution.
One of the most contentious proposals relates to how ZANU PF will choose its next leader once its cycle is aligned with the national electoral calendar. The draft separates the party leader from the party’s presidential candidate, although one person could hold both roles.
Secretary for legal affairs Ziyambi Ziyambi is said to be pushing the clause as a way to keep Mnangagwa as party president in 2029, citing a clamour from the provinces. Under the arrangement, dubbed the “Nyerere Way”, the party will elect its leader under its existing constitution while provinces will choose the candidate for the 2030 election.
The name refers to Julius Nyerere, who stepped down as Tanzania’s president in 1985 but remained Chama Cha Mapinduzi party president until 1990.
Biti said if the proposal is correct, ZANU must accept that, as a liberation movement, it is finished.
He traced the party’s history from its founding president, Ndabaningi Sithole, who he described as a principled cadre who led from the front until the Mgagao Declaration of 1975 stripped him of leadership, and chairman Herbert Chitepo, who was de facto leader from 1968 until his assassination in March 1975.
Biti said Chitepo was a brilliant executor of the struggle. He added that even Robert Mugabe, despite his aloofness, had an organic connection to the liberation movement that was evident in the 1980 general election.
“But that ZANU PF is gone,” Biti said.
He argued that the battle for the soul of ZANU PF was lost in November 2017, when the party surrendered itself to opportunists. He accused the current leadership of presiding over some of the darkest periods in the country’s history, including Gukurahundi, and described them as a “brigand of ravenous gangsters and hyenas.”
Biti pointed to a recent fundraising dinner where US$10 million was raised in hours as evidence of what the party has become.
“The ZANU of ideology and discipline has been taken over by limousine-riding, champagne-guzzling fraudsters with Gucci bags and Rolex watches,” he said.
“The party of Chitepo, Tekere, Nkomo and Sithole has been taken over by Scott, Tungwarara and Nguwaya. It has been taken over by criminal in chief Kuda Tagwirei.”
He claimed that the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment (No. 3) Act, 2026 was about “these gangsters” and that removing the right of Zimbabweans to directly vote for their president and handing that power to Parliament was a move created for Tagwirei and his associates.
Delinking the national president from a vote by the ZANU base, he said, is part of that agenda.
“Truth is, Kuda Tagwirei and his gang of syndicates have become the most dangerous individuals in Zimbabwe. They pose an existential threat to the Republic. Truth is, they must be stopped,” Biti said.
He called for the restoration of the 2013 Constitution, saying constitutionalism and the rule of law must be protected, the judiciary must be independent and secure, and the Republic must be safeguarded.
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