ZIMBABWE: President Robert Mugabe has rounded on his former propaganda chief Jonathan Moyo, accusing him of seeking to engineer a military coup in Zimbabwe.
As Mr Mugabe campaigned in Zimbabwe's second city of Bulawayo yesterday, the state-run Herald newspaper carried accounts of a speech in which he criticised Mr Moyo, his trusted information minister and spin doctor until he was fired last month.
Mr Mugabe used his stop yesterday to promote the ruling ZANU-PF as the only way forward for Zimbabwe's urban voters, who have borne the brunt of the country's economic crisis since 2000.
"Don't isolate Bulawayo. Don't isolate Harare. We want our towns to be the cities united under ZANU-PF," he told a rally.
The message of unity came just one day after Mr Mugabe launched an unprecedented attack on Mr Moyo, the former ZANU-PF spin doctor who was sacked last month in disgrace and has since campaigned for the March 31st poll as an independent.
"He did a lot of terrible things including meeting one of our commanders," Mr Mugabe told 3,000 supporters at a campaign rally in Mr Moyo's hometown of Tsholotsho on Wednesday night.
Mr Moyo was fired for spearheading an internal revolt against Mr Mugabe in the run-up to the party's congress last December.
As information minister, he was a key figure behind ZANU-PF's diplomatic war of words with the West and authored tough media laws which have led to the closure of leading opposition newspapers and the expulsion of foreign journalists.
Mr Moyo has become the most visible symbol of rifts within ZANU-PF that have taken on ethnic overtones in the fierce struggle over who is likely to take over from Mr Mugabe (81).
He angered Mr Mugabe by standing as an independent in Tsholotsho for next week's general elections. The district is in the opposition heartland of Matabeleland which Mr Mugabe is pushing to win after years of resentment following his bloody crackdown on a rebellion there in the 1980s.
Mr Mugabe said he and vice-president Joyce Mujuru met Mr Moyo "for over 1½ hours trying to convince him not to stand as an independent. We asked him why he went to meet (army commander General Philip) Sibanda, whether he wanted to stage a coup in his favour, and tears started flowing down his cheeks," Mr Mugabe said.
"The next day we heard he had filed his nomination papers to stand as an independent," he told the rally.
"I advised him that the whole machinery of the party will fall on you and you will get demolished. You can never win against ZANU-PF," he said.
Mr Mugabe's suggestion of a coup plot - a crime of treason - marked a potentially dangerous turn for Mr Moyo, who was not available for comment.- (Reuters)