STAFF REPORTER
CHIKOMBA-Prominent Chikomba businessman and ZANU-PF District Coordinating Committee member, Kestry Muzana (Pictured), popularly known as Boss Muzana, has weighed in on the current political discourse within the ruling party, calling for unity at the top.
An audio message purportedly by Muzana is circulating on various WhatsApp groups in the district.
In the audio, Muzana says President Emmerson Mnangagwa and Vice President Constantino Chiwenga share the same vision and leadership, and should not be separated.
“President Mnangagwa and Vice President Chiwenga is one and the same person, hence we can’t separate them,” Muzana is heard saying.
Muzana, who runs Fairdeal Guest Lodge, also praised Sakunda Holdings boss Dr Kudakwashe Tagwirei, describing him as a visionary leader.
He said Tagwirei’s elevation to numerous positions in a short space of time is not accidental, but is a reflection of President Mnangagwa’s desire to work with people who contribute to national development.
“Dr Tagwirei is a visionary man, ndoo chikonzero apihwa zvigaro zvakawanda munguva diki nekuti President ED vanoda vanhu vanobatsira nyika,” he said.
Muzana further said he is inspired by Tagwirei to the extent that he is considering joining the same church attended by Tagwirei to get notes on philanthropy and nation-building.
He said ,”Va Tagwirei has helped the country in many ways and deserves recognition for his contribution to national development,” he added.
The audio has sparked debate within Chikomba DCC structures, with some members agreeing with Muzana’s call for unity, while others have been sharing the clip widely as a sign of the party’s grassroots support for President Mnangagwa’s leadership.
Muzana’s call comes at a time when the country’s political situation is tense as a result of factional fights.
On October 16, Vice President Chiwenga delivered a bold challenge to Zanu-PF supporters during the 23rd National People’s Conference where he accused President Mnangagwa for repeating the late president Robert Mugabe’s mistakes.
The most explosive line came in Shona.
“Chii chakaita kuti 2nd Republic ivepo? Kwaive kugadzirisa zvakaipa zvanga zvichiitika mumashure, hatisi kudzokorora here kuita zvakambotadzwa?”
He did not stop there. He reminded the hall that “our party belongs to the people, never to individuals.” He insisted that “change must be driven by the people, not imposed from above.”
He recited to Mnangagwa his own slogan just after he took power in 2017 that “the voice of the people is the voice of God.” Then he dismissed the current culture of personal empire-building with the devastatingly simple observation: “Mazvake mazvake haana kwaanotisvitsa.”
In a party currently busy elevating the likes of Kudakwashe Tagwirei, rewriting rules, and floating 2030 as if it were holy scripture, these words land like a slap.
The elevation of business figures and the quiet rewriting of succession norms have created an atmosphere in which personal loyalty and proximity to power appear to matter more than collective decision-making or ideological consistency.
Against that background, Chiwenga’s remarks read as a direct rebuke of the emerging order.
This was not an isolated outburst. It is the latest chapter in a carefully escalating public campaign.
In Mutare last year, Chiwenga stood on the wartime gateway to Mozambique and announced that Vision 2030 is “a party and national covenant, not a personal pursuit.”
He told the delegates they are “not the alpha and the omega of Zimbabwe’s journey.”
He invoked the late General Tongogara, the commander who fought knowing he would never see independence, and then delivered the line that still stings: “The fallen are watching us. Their blood demands integrity. Their voices cry out against greed, corruption, laziness and moral decay.”
Mutare was the polite warning. Chinhoyi is the open challenge.
Yet for all the high-minded talk of principle, party ownership by the people, and the voice of God, Chiwenga’s Chinhoyi intervention is less a disinterested call for reform than a calculated move in the succession game.
The former army commander who helped usher in the Second Republic is positioning himself as the guardian of its founding ideals precisely because those ideals are now the most potent weapon against the current trajectory of Mnangagwa’s power consolidation.
By framing the debate around the original sins the 2017 transition was meant to correct, he forces the party to confront the possibility that the project has been hijacked – while quietly reminding everyone who still holds the military and liberation credentials to reclaim it.
In addition, Chiwenga has declared that Vision 2030 must lift ordinary Zimbabweans from poverty, not leave them as “hewers of wood and drawers of water, surviving from the benevolence of a privileged few”.
He did not mention names, but his words are likely to be read as a rebuke of the flamboyant patronage displayed by some in the ruling party. The late businessman Wicknell Chivayo, in particular, became synonymous with lavishing cars and cash on a hand-picked circle of musicians, pastors and other public figures, while most Zimbabweans could only look on from afar.
Critics argue that this so-called mbinga culture, the conspicuous flaunting of wealth championed by some within ZANU PF, undermines the value of hard work and patience and glamorises fortunes whose origins cannot be traced.
