Vice President Retired General Constantino Chiwenga has reiterated that the Operation Restore Legacy, which saw the resignation of former president Robert Mugabe, and the subsequent rising, to power, of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, was a peaceful process.
By Costa Nkomo
The operation saw the removal of a number of former Zanu-PF members and Mugabe loyalists from the ruling party and some, including former Cabinet Ministers, Professor Jonathan Moyo and Patrick Zhuwawo have remained in exile citing that they fear for their lives if they return to the country.
Addressing a Zanu-PF party rally in Hopley, Harare today, Chiwenga said Zimbabwe said the events of last November gave a new lease of life to Zimbabwe after the military intervened in the ruling party’s internal power squabbles.
“No one was beaten, no one was killed. We demonstrated this in November 2017. Zimbabwe was born to become new. It was transformed. There shall be stability, never again shall we be isolated, never again shall we live in abject poverty,” said Chiwenga.
Chiwenga’s statement comes on the back of Saviour Kasukuwere’s acquittal by the courts having been arrested and charged with exiting the country through an undesignated point at the time of the operation.
Kasukuwere is one of the G40 kingpins who was also targeted during the military take over.
However, having provided evidence that his life was at a knife edge during the military intervention, Kasukuwere has since been freed.
Kasukuwere’s lawyer, Jonathan Samukange told the court that his client might have been killed if he had remained in the country during the height of military take over.
“Lives would have been lost if it was not God who intervened. It is by his grace that out of 113 spent cartridges not even one killed a person‚” he said.
Professor Jonathan Moyo another former cabinet minister, also alleged to be a criminal to have surrounded former president, had his house bullets fired during the operation.
He posted on his microblogging site twitter in late November last year charging that the military was violent in its operation.
“What would you do if you and your family survived a 2am-15minute ZDF attack on your house with 7 children one of them 12 years old, by 25 SAS snippers with semi-automatic weapons; randomly firing tracer bullets and stun grenades? Is this the New Justice? New Dawn? New Era? New Zim?” charged Moyo.
In an interview with a regional television station, a couple of months ago, Mugabe lamented the missing of some of his former security personnel alleging that their whereabouts remain unknown since last November.
Meanwhile, Chiwenga defended the ruling party’s manifesto, a policy document that reflect how the party intends to resuscitate the economy and improve the social wellbeing.
Harare South constituency has been a Zanu PF stronghold since the time the birth of opposition political groups.
However, after transitional processes that rocked the ruling party last November, the party waits for a tough test from the opposition given that the then MP, Shadreck Mashayamombe was purged out and has since identified himself with the Nelson Chamisa led MDC Alliance.
