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PROF MOYO: How Mnangagwa’s ZBC interview triggered March 31 uprising
By Prof Jonathan Moyo
The Trigger of the Failed Call for an Uprising
To students of political science, the failed call for an uprising on 31 March 2025 begs the question: What triggered the mayhem in the first place?
This is an important question to interrogate because nothing happens without a cause. If the cause or trigger of the events that led to the call for an uprising on 31 March 2025 is not unravelled, the understanding of what happened and why it happened will remain incomplete, and the gap will risk a repeat or worse.
Here is what triggered the mayhem.
On 26 December 2024, ZBC-TV broadcast an interview that its senior reporter, Josephine Mugiyo, had with President Mnangagwa at State House in Harare, whose import unexpectedly and unintentionally triggered the events that led to the failed 31 March call for an uprising.
Relevant excerpts of the verbatim transcript [English translation] of the relevant part of the interview is reproduced below:
Josephine Mugiyo: While they are busy feasting on Christmas day, you are making arrangements for work?
President: Yes, indeed. Today is the perfect day to use for planning, because there are no people here to disturb me. Everyone is at home resting, so I have a few calls. I will be reflecting on who I will continue to work with next year and who I will let go….
Josephine Mugiyo: …Don’t you take a break and switch off the phones on Christmas day, Your Excellency?
President: …Does the country stop functioning because it’s Christmas? Actually this is the best period when one has some time to reflect without too many distractions; we are going into the new year. We must introduce new programmes, new policies. We must introspect about the past, our weaknesses, our strengths. We must look at that and say, this was my team. Is this the team that has delivered our vision, or does it require interrogating it.
Josephine Mugiyo: And are you going forward with that team, like you were saying earlier on?
President: No. I can’t release now. I’ll make my statement on, after, January 1.
(Link: The Full ZBC -TV interview)
https://x.com/ZBCNewsonline/status/1872247132931170560?t=tR4KQKHXpN3KvcmBH5wOug&s=19
This was a major interview with far-reaching implications, although it did not get the public attention that it deserved, except from some vested political interests which did not miss the import of the interview.
The interview was particularly significant because it signalled what was widely reported and understood to be an imminent, major cabinet reshuffle in the new year.
/mnangagwa-hints-at-cabinet-reshuffle-amid-factional-tensions-over-ed2030-slogan/
/index.php/2024/12/26/president-ponders-cabinet-reshuffle-says-i-will-issue-a-statement/
After it was broadcast, the interview triggered an untold story which unfolded in the public domain in ways that, as it often happens in politics, ultimately gave hostage to fortune to opportunistic and arguably reckless and self-defeating elements who ended up making calls for an uprising that failed. How this happened requires an appreciation of the news-making and agenda-setting opportunities typically presented by the month of January.
A clip of Josephine Mugiyo's Special Christmas ZBC-TV interview with President Mnangagwa that was broadcast on 26 December 2024, in which he signalled that he was working on a cabinet reshuffle he would announce in January, in the new year. Unsurprisingly, his signal triggered a… pic.twitter.com/2CD29nvVsQ
— Prof Jonathan Moyo (@ProfJNMoyo) April 15, 2025
Traditionally, and going as far back as one cares to go, the month of January in Zimbabwe is known for its notorious ‘January disease’, which is a colloquial description of the fact that, because people tend to overspend during the end of the year festive season, they end up with empty pockets; without money in January; and this lack of money is particularly common and widespread and it afflicts most people like a disease, in January.
There’s another less known manifestation of this ‘January disease’ in Zimbabwe: the lack of news for the media to report because most or the typical newsmakers tend to be away in January, holidaying somewhere in or outside the country till the middle or even the end of the month. So, January in Zimbabwe is usually a dry month for newsrooms.
In April 1999, when this writer was asked to design the structure and methodology of work for the Constitutional Commission, Dr Edison Zvobgo, who oversaw the Commission as Minister Without Portfolio, invited the writer to Masvingo over a weekend to go through the raison d’être of the Commission. When recalling the public debates, especially concerning the position of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) then chaired by Morgan Tsvangirai, that had led to the setting up of the Commission, Dr Zvobgo gleefully mentioned to the writer that he had won the debate by taking advantage of the absence from the news space of his detractors in January 1999; during which he said he hogged the limelight alone in that month, and managed to set the agenda for the setting up of the Commission, beyond reversal.
So it is that January is arguably the best time to grab the news headlines for purposes of agenda-setting in Zimbabwe. During the years in government, this writer applied the Zvobgo strategy every year, with considerable success.
Apropos this ‘January disease’ background, regarding its opportunity for news-making, all hell broke loose when President Mnangagwa signalled an impending cabinet reshuffle in the
interview with Josephine Mugiyo on 26 December 2024.
Soon after the ZBC interview, as 2024 ended and 2025 was beckoning, a number of cabinet ministers became very vocal in the media about the “2030 agenda”; and they started calling for the immediate implementation of ‘Resolution 1’ of ZanuPF’s National People’s Conference adopted in October 2024 for President Mnangagwa’s term of office to be extended to 2030 through an amendment to the Constitution of Zimbabwe.
In no time, and in apparent response to the 2030 calls by the cabinet ministers, some provincial ZanuPF leaders and MPs thought to be aspiring cabinet ministers joined the fray, also became vocal about the “2030 agenda” at party meetings and through the media; as they too called for the immediate implementation of ‘Resolution 1’ of ZanuPF’s National People’s Conference adopted in October 2024. Some of them went as far as drafting and circulating what they said was a motion on the “2030 agenda” they said they would move in Parliament.
In the circumstances, a spirited campaign ensued, involving some cabinet incumbents and some cabinet aspirants who seemed to believe that it was strategic to use the “2030 agenda” banner as a campaign to enhance their prospects of either being retained in or being appointed to the cabinet; in light of the imminent cabinet reshuffle that had been signalled by President Mnangagwa in the ZBC interview on 26 December 2024.
Although there was nothing amiss about this per se, it was nevertheless problematic.
The palpable campaign took place in the middle of the end-of-year festive season when the generality of the ZanuPF membership and party structures were still on holiday. Also, and this is particularly notable, both the Cabinet and Parliament were in recess for the annual break until early February 2025. This gave the distinct impression that the audience of the campaign was not the party membership or structures, not the Cabinet, not Parliament — all who were enjoying their vacation; the audience was President Mnangagwa who had signalled on national television on 26 December 2024 that he had spent his Christmas day reviewing his cabinet with a view to making major changes to it in the new year.
Because the campaign played out in public at party meetings and in the media, it became big news; in January, a month that is usually with little news report, besides road accidents or rainfall disasters related to the floods or cyclones.
Predictably, the campaign attracted the attention of media organisations as well as journalists cum social media influencers, whose reports in turn triggered the response of NGOs and church groups who mistook the campaign for cabinet positions by some government ministers and ZanuPF hopefuls as an orchestrated, organised and systematic push for 2030 by President Mnangagwa himself. Media organisations, journalists cum social media influencers, NGOs and some church groups came out with guns blazing against the perceived push.
A robust campaign for cabinet positions under the banner of the “2030 agenda”, which was playing out very prominently in the media and at ZanuPF provincial meetings, having been triggered by a ZBC Christmas interview in which President Mnangagwa signalled a major and imminent cabinet reshuffle; was understandably but wrongly seen as a major push for the “2030 agenda”.
This opened the floodgates.
Elements within other ZanuPF wings or factions, especially but not only in the ranks of the veterans of the liberation war, who have issues with the “2030 agenda”, felt left out or left behind and insecure.
Because the two groups that were campaigning (the incumbents and aspirants) were campaigning under the same 20230 banner, calling for the immediate implementation of ‘Resolution 1’ of ZanuPF’s National People’s Conference adopted in October 2024, sections of the veterans of the liberation war linked up with factional interests and opposition elements to agitate against the 2030 banner used by the incumbents and aspirants.
As things turned out, a loose affiliation of 2030 opponents was born. The affiliation made a false start by confusing the 2030 banner — used by the campaigners for cabinet positions in what they thought was an imminent cabinet reshuffle — with an orchestrated, organised, and systematic push for 2030. But, substantively speaking, a 2030 campaign banner for cabinet positions in January 2025 cannot be the same thing as a push for a constitutional amendment to remove presidential term limits.
In any event, the spirited and very visible campaign for cabinet positions under the 2030 banner opened the floodgates for muchekadzafa (scavenging) opportunists to pounce and call for an uprising, which failed on 31 March 2025, under the guise of “stopping the push for the 2030 agenda”; when all that was needed, if anything at all, was to stop the campaign for cabinet positions between some cabinet incumbents and some ZanuPF aspirants, who were triggered to expect an imminent and major cabinet reshuffle by the ZBC-TV interview with President Mnangagwa on 26 December 2024.
But in the end, as seen on 31 March 2025, the muchekadzafa opportunists came unstuck when it became clear that there was no “kill” or “bag” to scavenge or harvest.
To be clear, the use of the “2030 agenda” as a campaign mantra by some cabinet incumbents and some ZanuPF aspirants to retain or gain positions in what they thought or believed was an imminent and major cabinet reshuffle, was in itself not sinister; it was politics as usual. What was sinister was the distortion of the campaign by some muchekadzafa opportunists and the usual malcontents who misrepresented the campaign as a premeditated push by President Mnangagwa for the “2030 agenda”.
Implications: Unity is Very Important
All told, the drama of the campaign for cabinet positions conveniently using the banner of the “2030 agenda” — and the opportunistic response to or confusion of that campaign by the muchekadzafa opportunists who saw that campaign as a push for immediate implementation of ‘Resolution 1’ of ZanuPF’s National People’s Conference adopted in October 2024 — has been costly to the country’s national economic and development interests.
The country has practically lost the whole first quarter of the financial year, during which public discourse has been bogged down because of disinformation and misinformation pranks that have nothing whatsoever to do with service delivery issues from the standpoint of the implementation of the national budget, which directly affects people’s daily livelihoods.
Students of public policy know only too well that the cacophonic noise that has attracted the most likes and has grabbed countless headlines since January 2025 has nothing to do with public accountability at all, for two main reasons: Firstly, the noise has been all about disinformation and misinformation.
Secondly, and more importantly, public accountability arises from how government ministries, departments, and parastatals are performing in term of the delivery of their mandate using their approved budgets. It is that performance that tells the story of service delivery, not the disinformation and misinformation fairy tales on social media platforms that are typically based on mostly unproven hearsay.
Thirdly, it is now self-evident that effective and efficient service delivery is compromised in and by a toxic policy making environment such as the one Zimbabwe has experienced over the first quarter of 2025. Something must give.
In times like this, national unity is a paramount requisite. For ZanuPF, this should start with party unity. The national leadership has a responsibility to exude such unity. It is propitious that the end of the first quarter of the year, April, is the National Independence month, the month when Zimbabwe was born on its 18th day, to be commemorated this Friday.
Zimbabwe has enough experience, some of it sad and painful, from which to remember the importance of national unity. The idea of a divided or factionalised national leadership or government is detrimental to the national interest. It’s impossible to unite a nation whose national leadership is divided.
For national unity to hold, there must be a functional and visible symbiotic relationship between the people as the base of the nation and the leadership as the apex of the base. In government, this means that the president and his deputy or deputies must not only work together but must also be seen to be working together as one at all times, especially in times like this. It is in this trite yet fundamental context that the first line of defence for any president at all times in any government or political system is his deputy or deputies.
On the back of the first quarter of the year, which has gone with the wind, the commemoration of Independence Day 2025 this week on Friday provides a timely opportunity to remember, reflect, reset and recover!