South Africa

Moyo questioned about 'coup plot'

Mugabe attacks former information minister

March 25, 2005 Edition 1

Harare: President Robert Mugabe asked fired information minister Jonathan Moyo if he had been plotting a military coup, the state-owned Herald newspaper reported yesterday.

Moyo, a former university professor who had gone from Mugabe critic to top aide, was fired from the cabinet last month after challenging the president's authority.

The newspaper said that Mugabe told a campaign rally in Tsholotsho, a constituency on the Botswana border where Moyo is an independent candidate in the March 31 parliamentary elections, that he had quizzed his former minister about a meeting with army commander Phillip Sibanda.

Moyo "did a lot of terrible things - including meeting one of our commanders, Lt Gen Sibanda," Mugabe was quoted as saying.

He said he and Vice-President Joyce Mujuru had met Moyo to try to persuade him not to run for parliament as an independent.

"We asked him why he went to meet Sibanda, whether he wanted to stage a coup in his favour, and tears started flowing down his cheeks," Mugabe said.

He did not disclose what Moyo said about the meeting.

Moyo and Sibanda were not immediately available for comment.

Mugabe said Moyo gravely miscalculated in getting supporters of parliamentary Speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa to meet in Tsholotsho last November, to back Mnangagwa's vice-presidential nomination against Mujuru, who was Mugabe's pick.

"You are educated, but do not have wisdom," the newspaper said Mugabe told Moyo.

Six of the ruling party's 10 provinces endorsed Mnangagwa at Moyo's meeting, but Mugabe ruled that Mujuru had to take precedence under a 1999 resolution favouring women in one out of three official posts.

Mujuru is the wife of retired army commander Solomon Mujuru.

If Mnangagwa had become vice-president, it would have been seen as a step toward his imminent takeover as president, and Mugabe's retirement before his current term ends in 2008.

Moyo, brought into government as information minister in July 2000, was expelled from the cabinet and the ruling party after filing his nomination papers as an independent candidate last month.

Moyo was the architect of the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act. - Sapa-AP