SUSPENDED Zanu PF youth league national commissar Godfrey Tsenengamu has vowed he will never be silenced by anyone, telling journalists this was tried to no avail by then President Robert Mugabe in 2017.
The outspoken politician also made sensational claims some Zanu PF officials have tried to bribe him into stopping his anti-corruption campaign but he has refused.
Tsenengamu was last Wednesday summarily suspended together with party youth league deputy secretary Lewis Matutu for alleged indiscipline.
The axed youth leaders torched a storm when they fingered oil mogul Kudakwashe Tagwirei and two other prominent business leaders as the godfathers of the country’s cartels that have bled the economy of billions of dollars through underhand dealings which have often been left unchecked.
Tsenengamu’s firebrand character was first tested during the Mugabe era when he bravely challenged the then state leader to give up his job for then Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
That earned him a fierce backlash from a once unforgiving former leader.
Now with an almost similar dilemma of having to remain silent and hope to get his job back or to persist with his campaign, the former Mashonaland central province youth chair has chosen the latter.
He has since formed his Zim-First Agenda which he intends to use as a platform to campaign against high level corruption in the country.
Said Tsenengamu in apparent reference to President Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF, “On the political side, you have done with us by suspending us from the ruling party and letting us just being card carrying members.
“You can kill the messenger and not the message and the anti-corruption drive will continue.
“Efforts are being made to put me on mute, but I won’t be silenced by 30 pieces of silver.”
He added, “I was arrested a good five times and I had 10 charges when the new dispensation came into power; subversion charges trying to remove a legitimately elected government, undermining the authority of the government, intimidating and threatening the (then) first family, all sort of charges, so that I can toe the line.
“By suspending me now they actually made a mistake because I will say all I want and they will just say ‘leave him alone, he is a problem child’.
“You cannot silence me, Mugabe tried it, but I didn’t keep quiet. People listen to my message not because I am youth league national commissar but because I am Tsenengamu.
“Political positions do not matter to me.
“They think by suspending me they have silenced me, honestly you can’t do that to a person like me.”
Tsenengamu further questioned how they were targeted for their 12 month suspensions when they had accused outsiders in Tagwirei, Tafadzwa Musarara and Billy Rautenbach of corruption.
“The two do not belong to Zanu PF, they are not members and do not have a card of the party, Billy doesn’t know even to chant a party slogan.” – Newzim
