Higher Education Minister Jonathan Moyo is in the news these days because of the Zimbabwe Manpower Development Fund scandal, but it appears no one wants to touch him.
This should not be surprising because Jonathan Moyo is an asset to the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front. At least that is what former ZANU-PF Secretary for Administration Didymus Mutasa said when Moyo was readmitted to the party after four years in the wilderness.
Even the United States embassy was baffled by his return calling it “phoenix-like” because not only was Jonathan Moyo re-admitted to the party but was also elected to its central committee and later its politburo.
This was unheard of as most senior party officials who had been expelled from the party had never been re-admitted and given senior posts.
Moyo, on the other hand, was not even a senior member of the party.
He came into government in 2000 as one of the technocrats Mugabe invited into his government some of whom were not even members of the party.
But Moyo stamped his authority in the government as Mugabe’s spokesman. He became so powerful that senior members of the party disliked him and celebrated when he was kicked out of the government following the Tsholotsho Declaration at which some members opposed Mugabe’s appointment of Joice Mujuru as party Vice-President in 2004.
It was, however, not clear how Moyo got readmitted because at the time of his expulsion he was allegedly in the group that favoured Emmerson Mnangagwa for vice-president.
Reports, however, now link him to the G40 faction of ZANU-PF which is allegedly behind First Lady Grace Mugabe though over the years Jonathan Moyo has brushed off G40 as a demographic group rather than a political faction.
Below are the Wikileaks cables that mention Moyo’s name:
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