Hundreds of delegates started arriving on Tuesday in Harare ahead of this week’s ruling party congress which is likely to see the election of Zimbabwe’s first woman vice-president.
Around 9 000 delegates of President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) are due to attend the five-day conference, which begins on Wednesday.
Top of the agenda is the election of a new vice-president to replace Simon Muzenda, who died last year in his eighties after years of deteriorating health.
That position is almost certain to go to Water Resources Minister Joyce Mujuru, after Mugabe said last week he thought the position should go to a woman.
”We really support the nomination of Comrade Mujuru,” Mugabe told party supporters.
There have been reports of bitter fighting within Zanu-PF for the position. Most provincial ZANU-PF committees have now supported Mujuru’s nomination, which will now have to be ratified by the congress.
Zimbabwe has two vice presidents. Sitting vice president Joseph Msika is likely to retain his post after being nominated by most provinces.
If elected, Mujuru, who has been in the Zimbabwean Cabinet since independence in 1980 when she was only 25 years old, will be the southern African country’s first female vice-president.
She has held several portfolios and is the wife of the former army commander Solomon Mujuru. She is also a veteran of Zimbabwe’s war for independence.
The election of a new vice-president is not the only item on the agenda of the congress, which is held every five years.
The party’s spokesman, Nathan Shamuyarira, has said issues like rural development, electrification and water supplies will be discussed, as will the country’s controversial land reform programme.
”It will be an eventful congress,” Shamuyarira said this weekend.
Another top party official, Amos Midzi, the governor of Harare province, has said transport problems must be discussed, as well as ways of improving people’s access to health care. Doctors’ fees and the cost of health insurance have recently soared, putting them out of the reach of many.
But the independent press has been sceptical that any advances will be made, with the weekly Standard calling it a ”non-event.”
Well-known government critic and constitutional lawyer Lovemore Madhuku told reporters that the congress was just another government meeting.
”No one takes those congresses seriously. It’s not different from a government function,” he said.
He described the 49-year-old Mujuru as ”young blood in terms of age, but not in terms of ideas”.
”Her ideas are as old as those of Mugabe,” said Madhuku.
Several foreign delegates wil be attending the congress, including officials from China. Mugabe has urged Zimbabweans to forge closer links with China.
The meeting is to be held at Harare’s International Conference Centre, in a city hotel. Although officially due to start Wednesday, most of the important business is likely to take place later in the week.
The congress has been estimated to cost 20-billion Zimbabwe dollars. – Sapa-AFP