Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, in power since his country’s independence from Britain in 1980, has reaffirmed he will retire in 2008 and stressed that he is not grooming an heir, a state-owned daily reported on Friday.
”I have said it before that when my term ends I will retire,” The Herald quoted Mugabe as saying in an interview to Indonesia’s Jakarta Post newspaper.
”I still have to do three years … but it is my intention to retire,” said Mugabe, who is in Indonesia attending the Asia-Africa Summit.
The octogenarian leader said he will let Zimbabweans choose their next leader.
”I will never groom a successor,” he said. ”We will never do that. We will never make that mistake.”
Mugabe said his successor should come from the ruling Zanu-PF party, arguing that the country’s main opposition Movement for Democratic Movement (MDC) is a stooge of Britain, which he accuses of trying to topple his regime.
”Of course the leader will come from Zanu-PF,” Mugabe said. ”We are the party that defeated colonialism and the people realise that. The other party is [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair’s, and if you followed our election, the objective was to bury Mr Blair.”
Zanu-PF won an overwhelming majority in parliamentary elections on March 31, dubbed ”the anti-Blair election”, which gave it a two-third majority to allow it to make constitutional changes on its own.
Relations between Zimbabwe and Britain soured when Zimbabwe embarked on its controversial land seizures five years ago.
Mugabe accused the Labour Party of reneging on an undertaking by Britain in 1979 to compensate white farmers for properties taken from them for reallocation to landless blacks. — Sapa-AFP