Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe called for unity at a crucial ruling party congress on Thursday amid tensions within the governing Zanu-PF about the election of a new vice-president.
”The message of unity… has continued to energise us even as our external and internal enemies have been vigorously seeking their dream of regime change,” Mugabe said at the official opening ceremony of a five-day congress in Harare.
The event started with the arrival and registration of delegates on Wednesday, a few hours after six senior Zimbabwe African National Union -Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) officials were suspended and the controversial Information Minister Jonathan Moyo reprimanded.
Moyo allegedly organised a meeting aimed at scuppering party efforts to elect Water Resources Minister Joyce Mujuru to fill the vacant post of vice-president.
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.
In Zimbabwe, there are two vice-presidents in the ruling party who are automatically also the vice-presidents of the country.
Sitting vice-president Joseph Msika is likely to retain his post after being nominated by most provinces.
Moyo allegedly campaigned for parliamentary speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa to be elected.
Analysts say whoever gets elected is most likely to succeed Mugabe when his current term expires in 2008.
”We wonder why some amongst us should seek to depart from agreed democratic positions allowing their ambitions to mislead them,” Mugabe said.
Mugabe also said the country remained unified in the face of what he termed a threat from British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government to effect a regime change by backing ”stooge parties”, a reference to the main opposition party here.
The government accuses Blair’s government of working with the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to illegally remove Mugabe’s government from power.
”We are proud that we are meeting as a united Zimbabwean party, leading a united Zimbabwean people that believe in themselves,” Mugabe said.
Meanwhile, in Cape Town, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Thursday that attendance by South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) at the Zanu-PF congress would illustrate to the opposition that the ANC could not be an honest broker in resolving Zimbabwe’s current political crisis.
This is according to DA national chairperson Joe Seremane, following a report in Business Day that the ANC delegation would be attending the Zanu-PF congress on Thursday.
ANC spokesman Steyn Speed said the ANC had sent a four-person delegation to Zimbabwe that included Henry Makgothi, a former national executive committee member and former treason trialist, and ANC women’s league treasurer-general Bertha Gxowa.
Seremane said, however, that the ANC’s attendance ”can only be viewed as a visible endorsement of Zanu-PF’s patently undemocratic policies and practices”.
He said the question remained whether the ANC would attend a Zimbabwe official opposition Movement for Democratic Change congress ”in the unlikely event that such a congress would be allowed to take place by Zanu-PF”. – Sapa-AFP and I-Net Bridge