Mliswa takes aim at Uebert Angel over Chiwenga defence

PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Ambassador-at-Large, Uebert Angel, has come under fire from former independent legislator Temba Mliswa after rebuking critics of Vice President Constantino Chiwenga for attacking him.

Angel used his sermon on Sunday to chastise those denigrating Chiwenga for opposing the Constitutional Amendment Act Number 3 and ZANU PF’s direction.

Although Angel did not single out any individuals, his remarks prompted a strong response from Mliswa, a vocal critic of Chiwenga.

In a lengthy statement, Mliswa challenged Angel’s distinction between legitimate criticism and what he described as contempt, accusing the cleric of using religion to discourage political dissent.

“And he does so with a distinction that collapses the moment you touch it. Criticism, he says, is allowed. Contempt is diabolic. But who decides where one ends and the other begins? That is not theology but censorship!

“For Angel’s sermon rests upon a constitutional amnesia so convenient one must assume it is deliberate. In this Republic there is one centre of executive power, not two.

“President Emmerson Mnangagwa is Head of State, Head of Government, Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces, and First Secretary of ZANU-PF. The Vice President is his deputy and holds no independent mandate. He commands no parallel centre and serves, constitutionally and politically, at the President’s pleasure,” said Mliswa.

Chiwenga opposed the proposed extension of Mnangagwa’s tenure when the matter was tabled before ZANU PF’s Politburo earlier this year.

However, the constitutional changes subsequently went ahead and were signed into law in July.

At the party’s conference in Chinhoyi last month, Chiwenga also questioned ZANU PF’s direction, fuelling further debate over tensions within the ruling party.

Mliswa accused Angel of shielding Chiwenga despite what he described as the Vice President’s own attacks on Mnangagwa.

“But who, pray, undermined whom at Chinhoyi on 16 October? It was the VP himself who stood before a full house of his own party and went offside, full throttle, as if the Presidency were a debating society and not an office to be respected.

“It is the Vice President’s camp, not the citizenry, that has turned the Presidency into a waiting room and made succession a daily briefing, while the incumbent still occupies State House.

“Angel is silent on all this. His sermon thus amounts to this perverse doctrine: Let the President be undermined from within. Let the centre of power be attacked by its own deputy, but let the citizen who notices it be told to hush, to save his bundles, to stop listening to ‘nonsense’,” said Mliswa.

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