Zimbabwe’s ruling party on Saturday elected longtime Cabinet minister Joyce Mujuru as the country’s first woman vice-president at the end of a party congress.
Welcoming her election President Robert Mugabe hinted that Mujuru may be destined for higher office.
”When you choose her as a vice-president, you don’t want her to remain in that chair do you?” he asked the delegates amid applause.
Mugabe, who earlier this week called for unity in his party again hit out at reports of infighting over the nomination of Mujuru.
”No party can ever succeed if amongst its members there are those who believe in secret dealings, in clandestine activities,” he said in reference to a meeting organised by some top government officials allegedly in support of a rival candidate to the vice-presidency.
His controversial information minister, Jonathan Moyo was one of the alleged organisers of the meeting.
In what may be a sign of Moyo’s loss of favour in the party, he was not elected on Saturday as a member of the central committee, the ruling party’s chief co-ordinating body.
Mugabe closed the congress in fighting style, saying: ”You came, you saw, you conquered” to more than 10 000 delegates gathered at the Harare International Conference Centre.
Earlier on Saturday various party committees presented reports on the state of the party, the nation and the country’s international relations.
Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge on Saturday told the gathering that Zimbabwe was at ”war” with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. But many ruling party supporters will see Mujuru’s election as the focal point of the congress.
The election of Mujuru, who has held various Cabinet posts since independence from white minority rule in 1980, comes as little surprise after Mugabe said he and the party were behind her.
Her election is likely to be welcomed by women who make up more than 50% of the country’s 11,6-million people.
After the announcement of her election Mugabe’s wife Grace got up and embraced Mujuru, who is a veteran of the country’s war of independence.
At the same congress Mugabe was unanimously confirmed as president of the party, amid deafening cheers from party delegates.
Co-vice president Msika was also confirmed in his position. The congress comes just four months ahead of watershed parliamentary elections expected to be held in March, which the ruling party has vowed to win.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has vowed to boycott the poll unless the government carries out electoral reforms. The MDC claims elections in 2000 and 2002 were flawed.
But foreign minister Mudenge earlier on Saturday struck a defiant note, saying the opposition party would lose.
”The Western powers — the Americans, the British, the Europeans — all know that the MDC is going to lose,” Mudenge told the congress.
”They are already working with plans to attack and condemn those elections before they are held. We have to be vigilant,” he said.
Meanwhile the opposition said its leader Morgan Tsvangirai was on Saturday briefly detained by police at Harare International Airport on his return from a whirlwind tour of Europe, where he called for pressure against the Mugabe government to carry out electoral reforms.
He was later released.
In his closing speech Saturday Mugabe criticised Tsvangirai for travelling to Europe, saying his constituents were among Western nations.
”That’s where their [the MDC’s] constituents are,” said Mugabe.
”It is Mr Blair, the Germans, the Dutch, the Americans. Those are the people who matter to them.” ‒ Sapa-AFP