Politics
Mugabe: ZANU-PF will be triumphant in the elections
Zimbabwe’s long-time ruler expressed confidence Thursday that his party can win proposed elections, saying there was no need for coercive campaigning or political violence because voters support his party’s “progressive” economic ideas.
President Robert Mugabe (pictured), 87, has called for elections next year to end a fragile 30-month coalition with the former opposition — a partnership he described as an impractical “patch on torn trousers.”
In an address to his ZANU PF party’s annual convention, Mugabe criticized Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s party. He said it was “busy chasing women,” a reference to widower Tsvangirai’s break-up with a commodity broker who claimed he had made her pregnant.
“We think of our people, we are busy taking care of our country,” Mugabe said.
Mugabe’s often violent program to seize thousands of white-owned farms since 2000 disrupted the agriculture-based economy. He has also announced plans to force businesses and mines to hand over a 51 percent ownership to black Zimbabweans.
He addressed 6,000 delegates in the city of Bulawayo for 2 1/2 hours Thursday. The convention ends Saturday.
Mugabe warned Zimbabweans to be alert to attempted Western manipulation of mineral resources in gold, platinum and diamonds. Speaking in the local Shona language, he also said the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi befriended the West who wanted Libya’s oil. Western powers then “squashed him in broad daylight.”
Dewa Mavhinga, a political analyst with the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, told The Associated Press that he feared Mugabe will unilaterally call early elections.
