War Veterans, Zvigananda, Factional Infighting, and “buttocks instead of brains”

"The only 2030 he will see is half past eight on the clock..." ~ Blessed Geza.

Three weeks ago, war veterans, led by Blessed Runesu Geza (aka Comrade Bombshell), a war veteran of the liberation struggle, launched a scathing attack on President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa accusing him of surrounding himself with “corrupt gangsters who abuse National resources” while perpetuating “corruption, cronyism and nepotism” to an “extent that has never been seen before in this country. Details of the interview can be found in this video. In the same video President Mnangagwa is accused of appointing unqualified ministers. It is important to note that Blessed Geza is a member of the ZANU PF Central committee (second to the Politburo), arguably a member of President Mnangagwa’s winning coalition. According to Bueno de Mesquita, in The Dictator’s Handbook, these are the people whose loyalty the Leader depends on to gain office and stay in power. In a regime like ZANU PF’s the winning coalition is small, and its most evident appearance is Politburo, seconded by the central committee which is the principal organ of the congress.

Around the same week, Vice President Chiwenga, then acting president of the republic and a member of the winning coalition, called for an end to corruption saying, “we fought for a total Zimbabwe…where everyone had a seat at the table…” and not the “mbingas, whom we called zvigananda in the war.” The speech can be found here in full. The Vice president called out the mbingas with “big bellies from ill-gotten wealth” which may be interpreted as a direct message to President Mnangagwa’s ally (or whatever the relationship is) Wicknell Chivayo. Also, by invoking the liberation struggle and saying the country has become a place only where few have a seat at the table, Chiwenga echoes the words of Blessed Geza and the war veterans who have become disavowed with the Mnangagwa presidency. The poetic parallel to 2017, when Vice President Chiwenga was the commander of the Zimbabwe National Army spearheading the coup that unseated Robert Mugabe, cannot be ignored, the army, on National TV, claimed that they were “targeting criminals” around the president. 

On the 12th of February 2025, the Zimbabwe Republic police released a press statement seeking information about the whereabouts of Blessed Geza, who is alleged to have stolen vehicles, facing two counts of insulting the office of the president and inciting the public to commit violence. Blessed Geza’s whereabouts are unknown, but sources, like journalist Hopewell Chin’ono claim to be reliably informed that his family is being harassed and as on 20 February 2025, his wife was picked up by the police. The journalist, Blessed Mhlanga, who interviewed and published the war veterans’ interview via HSTV, was summoned to the Harare Central Police Station on the 3rd of February 2025. On February 17, he tweeted that; three persons armed with pistols came into his office looking for him, and then he was summoned by the police again to Law and Order. 

This simultaneously occurs with the intensification of factional battles within the ruling party, where the president has refused to either anoint a successor or extend his term limit claiming to be a constitutionalist. Douglas Mahiya, a ZANU PF War Veterans, claiming to speak for all war veterans declared willingness to “tear the constitution” if that is what it takes to extend the term from 2028 to 2030. The minister of local government Daniel Garwe, in this video, says Mnangagwa was given the ‘vision 2030’ in a manner that is similar to Moses of the bible. The ZANU PF youth league has also been hurling acerbic insults to those who are opposed to extending the term limit, to the extent of insulting war veterans like Blessed Geza. In this video, Charles Munangasa who is the acting CEO of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation can be heard using vulgar “futsek” to insult Geza. It might be worth remembering here that in the showdown leading to the coup of 2017, the Grace Mugabe faction which openly insulted the old guard, the war veterans, did not win. 

The purpose of this blog is not to bring you up to speed with current affairs and garner your attention how the political landscape is increasingly becoming landmine infested. However, the question is how you, as an ordinary Zimbabwean who may not be as interested in politics or may not have enough time to follow the politics or like many people, could have gotten disavowed with the political system and thus become apathetic, should look at the unfolding political drama. The word “unfolding” gives the impression that I am suggesting that this will culminate in a particular end which is akin to the 2017 coup - there were armored troop careers on the streets of Harare on the 19th of February 2025 (apparently on a scheduled exercise to test equipment according to the government’s spokesperson, Nick Mangwana.) I am not certain that a coup is impending, and I believe that from the 2017 coup Zimbabwe should have learnt a lesson that perhaps a military coup is not the best way to transfer power. Power never went to the people (democracy), instead it was kept in the hands of the elites who had always been part of the Mugabe regime. And above all we must avoid being unnecessarily excited by ZANU PF factional battles, they may not mean that Zimbabwe will become better economically and politically, or that the Party is finally imploding. 

I trust neither Mnangagwa’s promise that he will not push for an extension to his term nor the war veterans’ intentions in launching vitriolic attacks on Mnangagwa and his government. Dictatorial leaders often backslide on their promises and because of their repressive strategies and surrounding themselves with sycophantic yes-men, they do not get punished for this. President Mnangagwa’s track record does not indicate that he can be trusted to keep his promises, especially when it comes to promises that may stand in his way of consolidating power. I have written before about the arbitrary and unconstitutional detentions of journalists and opposition members, attempted abductions and terrorization of opposition supporters that have occurred under his watch. Freedom House ranks Zimbabwe as  not free, with a score of 27/100, scoring very low on both political and civil rights - the war veterans and the Vice President Chiwenga support this in their own unique ways. A conspiratorial take would be that, leadership changes in regimes like ZANU PF may result in injurious instabilities within the party, such that it follows logic to think that ZANU PF elites may unify to keep power (and thus access to resources and benefit streams) within the party even if it means dismantling the constitution or staging a referendum. This is my own speculation. 

The influence of blessed Geza should not be underestimated; when he spoke out, triggering multiple other war veterans to join in the criticism of the Mnangagwa regime, the government responded by allocating US$1.5 Million for “empowering the freedom fighters” and further building them houses. Does this then mean that there is a state of panic and is this an attempt to silence the war veterans? Largely, yes. Part of what led to the collapse of the Mugabe regime was the disregard of the war veterans, and as Douglas Rogers writes in his Two Weeks in November, the “old guard”, and according to Geza, the war veterans played a significant role in Mnangagwa’s ascension to power. 

What this political play will culminate in, I am not certain, but I am concerned with how the elites might yet again decide how power should be transferred without the consent of the masses, inhibiting any chance we may have at true democratization. The political actors, especially in an environment where the press is not free and the cost of exposing the regime is high, have the advantage of acting incognito, and we may never find out what is happening in the background. A final thought would be to consider; when do political actors like war veterans start to speak out (and in the name of Zimbabweans) against the executive? And if it is only when the system does not serve them as they intend to be served, what guarantee do we have that when the system favors them, they will ever take the side of the people? It is true that some war veterans who aligned their political wills with the ruling party were beneficiaries of both the Mugabe and Mnangagwa regimes, when people were suffering the most at the hands of corrupt, unkind governments. It would be a mistake to group all war veterans as a homogeneous group that has a singular purpose in mind - the liberation of Zimbabwe, they may be looking out for their pockets and interests...