Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa has blamed an apparent assassination attempt at a political rally on Saturday last week on a faction led by Grace Mugabe, the wife of former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe.
In an interview with the BBC, Mnangagwa said that he believed the so-called Generation 40 (G40) faction was responsible for the grenade thrown at the podium inside White City Stadium in Bulawayo on Saturday afternoon.
The 75-year-old leader, who took power in November last year following a military takeover that led to the resignation of Robert Mugabe after a rule of 37 years, stopped short of blaming the former first lady directly.
The attack killed two people and injured 49.
Both of the nation’s vice presidents were slightly injured in the blast, as were several other top officials in the ruling Zimbabwe African Union-Patriotic Front party.
Manangagwa earlier said the attack had been “calculated to achieve a bloodbath” and “destabilize the ongoing electoral program.”
An upcoming parliamentary and presidential election is the latest turning point in the most tumultuous few months in almost four decades of Zimbabwe’s political history.
Although the July 30 poll is realistically a two-horse contest between the ruling party and the Movement for Democratic Change, the long-standing opposition, more than 20 candidates are contesting the presidency.
“My hunch without evidence is that the people who [were] aggrieved by the new dispensation are the G40, so that is the logical conclusion,” Mnangagwa told the BBC. “I think this is a political action by some aggrieved persons by the current democratic dispensation in the country.”
There is much bitter history between Mnangagwa, a veteran of Zimbabwe’s liberation wars and a close aide to Robert Mugabe for decades, and the G40 faction.
The November takeover came after Mnangagwa was dismissed as vice president by the ailing 94-year-old autocrat, a move that he and Zimbabwe’s powerful military saw as clearing the way to power for the 54-year-old first lady and her supporters.
A number of previous alleged assassination attempts have been blamed on the G40 by Mnangagwa and his supporters, including an apparent poisoning last year.
No evidence has emerged to implicate any individual or group.
Mnangagwa told the BBC that Grace Mugabe was “politically immature and was easily used by a tool who wanted to get at me.”
Many of those who were close to the former first lady have now fled Zimbabwe.
Opposition leaders in Zimbabwe fear the bombing might serve as a pretext for a wide-ranging crackdown by the government or the military in the southern African state.
Such concern was unfounded, Manangwa said.
“There is no need for a security crackdown, this is a criminal activity, but of course we must make sure the population is protected and only when we have got them are we going to be able to assess the extent to which the network is spread,” Manangwa said.
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