FORMER higher education minister Professor Jonathan Moyo is in Malawi, local media claimed this week, adding he had also given a “special interview” on last November’s political drama in Harare which forced him into exile.
Prof Moyo, has largely used social media to condemn the military intervention which ousted former President Robert Mugabe last November.
Loyalists of the former Zanu PF leader were sacked from government and the ruling party with some, like Moyo, escaping into exile, while several of those who remained in the country have been arrested.
Although Moyo has used Twitter to criticise the successor Emmerson Mnangagwa regime as illegitimate, none of the ousted Mugabe loyalists had yet given extensive media interviews on the military-chaperoned power transfer in Harare.
His exact whereabouts had also remained a mystery with Kenya denying media reports that he had escaped to the east African country where is wife is also from. Moyo also scoffed at the claim, saying he was not in Kenya but on Twitter.
However, the Malawi-based Nyasa Times claimed on Facebook that he was in the SADC country.
Reads a Facebook post by the publication; “Please note that tomorrow we shall have a special interview with Zimbabwe former Higher and Tertiary Education Minister Prof Jonathan Moyo who is here in for exile after the military took over the government in Zimbabwe for more, gab your copy tomorrow.”
The publication’s claim could not be verified Tuesday and Moyo was not responding to queries sent to his social media accounts.
However, an ally of the former cabinet minister said they could not comment on Nyasa Times’ “claim not being true”.
Moyo was one of the kingpins of the G40 Zanu PF faction which battled the Lacoste group in the ruling party’s succession war.
Lacoste backed Mnangagwa while G40 had the support of Mugabe’s wife Grace and former co-vice president Phelekezela Mphoko.
After losing the succession fight with the November coup, most of the G40 loyalists have kept their counsel with Mugabe also not commenting about his forced resignation.
But Moyo has been savage and unrelenting in his criticism of the new Mnangagwa government forcing the new regime to warn him against “bad mouthing the country from exile”.
Said new Defence Forces Commander General Phillip Valerio Sibanda last December; one of “the members of the G40 cabal that had surrounded the former Head of State are now bad-mouthing the country from foreign lands where their intentions to harm the peace and tranquillity that exist in our country have been pronounced.”
Mnangagwa also said, while visiting South Africa, that most of the ousted G40 loyalists were not causing any trouble apart from three or so but declared that “this would soon end”.
He was believed to be referring to Moyo and former cabinet colleagues Saviour Kasukuwere and Patrick Zhuwao. – NewsZim