By Victor Fanuel
HARARE — President Emmerson Mnangagwa has taken an apparent swipe at his deputy Constantino Chiwenga over his absence from Zanu PF’s inaugural Presidential Fundraising Ball, adding a fresh public dimension to tensions surrounding the ruling party’s proposed constitutional amendments.
Addressing an ordinary politburo meeting on Tuesday, Mnangagwa appeared to take aim at his deputy Chiwenga, who skipped Saturday’s fundraising dinner, which raised US$9.495 million to finance preparations for the party’s 23rd National People’s Conference in Chinhoyi.
“Some of you came, some did not come but you are members of the Politburo,” Mnangagwa said.
Although the president did not name Chiwenga directly in his remarks, the timing has fuelled speculation about the significance of the vice president’s absence, coming days after an extraordinary politburo meeting collapsed amid a reported dispute over proposed amendments to the Zanu PF constitution.
The extraordinary meeting, scheduled for Friday, October 9, was expected to consider changes intended to align the party’s constitution with the recently amended national Constitution.
According to party insiders, Chiwenga challenged the proposals, questioned their legality and demanded that they be withdrawn from the agenda before Mnangagwa arrived.
Sources said Chiwenga confronted Zanu PF secretary-general Jacob Mudenda over the proposed amendments and demanded to see the 21 party resolutions reportedly cited as the basis for Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 3.
Justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi reportedly argued that the national constitutional amendments stemmed from resolutions adopted at Zanu PF conferences.
Chiwenga, however, is said to have insisted that the proposals could not proceed on that basis.
The meeting was subsequently called off.
In a statement, Zanu PF’s information department attributed the postponement to an overflow of presidential programmes, an explanation dismissed by a senior Zanu PF source who told local news outlet ZimLive that the scheduling justification was “hogwash.”
Mnangagwa’s subsequent remarks about attendance at the fundraising dinner have therefore drawn attention against the backdrop of the unresolved constitutional dispute, although there is no publicly established evidence that Chiwenga deliberately boycotted the event to protest against the proposed changes.
Chiwenga’s absence could nevertheless be politically significant.
The fundraising dinner was a high-profile event presided over by Mnangagwa as the party prepared for its conference, which runs from October 12 to 17 at Chinhoyi University of Technology.
Zanu PF’s conference is running under the theme “From Resolutions to Results: Consolidating Economic Development and Deepening Economic Empowerment Towards Vision 2030.”
The conference comes at a contentious moment for Zanu PF, with internal disagreements over the proposed constitutional amendments threatening to overshadow its public message of unity.
Chiwenga’s decision not to attend the Presidential Ball, if politically motivated, would suggest that disagreements over the party’s constitutional direction may be extending beyond formal meetings into events intended to demonstrate unity around Mnangagwa’s leadership.
Competing explanations remain unconfirmed, however, and neither Chiwenga nor the party has publicly established a connection between his absence and the constitutional row.
The US$9.5 million fundraising windfall has also prompted questions about the party’s spending priorities, particularly as communities in Masvingo Province and families affected by a deadly Lake Kariba ferry disaster face the consequences of emergencies declared national disasters by Mnangagwa.
Former foreign affairs minister Walter Mzembi, a prominent figure in the G40 faction who was expelled from Zanu PF in 2017, questioned whether the money raised at the dinner could instead have helped address the humanitarian crises.
Mzembi’s own attempt to return to the ruling party has stalled after the Zanu PF Masvingo provincial leadership summoned him to explain social media posts it considered critical of the party.
His readmission had not been approved at the time of the fundraising dinner.
In a social media post, Mzembi wrote: “The $9m raised from the Presidential Ball last night can easily fix Masvingo and Kariba State of Disasters if the Party scales down its annual gathering and address national emergencies.”
“It will be a people-centred gesture of the highest order,” Mzembi said.
The Masvingo hailstorm struck on October 5, leaving approximately 8,500 households with their roofs completely blown off, while around 90 percent of the 17,000 households assessed had shattered windows.
Electricity infrastructure and public facilities were also damaged, disrupting essential services across the province. Mnangagwa declared the affected areas a state of disaster.
The Lake Kariba tragedy followed the capsizing of the Rural Infrastructure Development Agency’s Mbuya Nehanda ferry on August 11.
Government declared a state of disaster to facilitate emergency response and recovery efforts after the vessel, travelling from Kariba to Chalala, capsized near Long Island.
