Zimbabwe’s former finance minister, Simba Makoni, a senior member of the ruling Zanu-PF party, announced on Tuesday that he would challenge President Robert Mugabe as an independent in elections next month.
”Following very extensive and intensive consultations with party members and activists countrywide, and also with others outside the party, I have accepted the call and hereby advise the people of Zimbabwe that I offer myself as candidate for the office of president,” Makoni told a press conference.
”Let me confirm that I share the agony and anguish of all citizens over the extreme hardships that we all have endured for nearly 10 years now,” added Makoni, who was Mugabe’s finance minister from 2000 to 2004.
”I also share the widely held view that these hardships are a result of failure of national leadership and that change at that level is a pre-requisite for change at other levels of national endeavour.”
Mugabe, who has ruled the former British colony since independence in 1980, is hoping to secure a sixth term in office at joint parliamentary and presidential elections on March 29.
The announcement by the widely respected Makoni comes after the breakdown of talks between the two factions of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change designed to agree on a joint candidate to take on 83-year-old Mugabe.
Since Makoni left office, Zimbabwe’s economy has been on a dramatic downward spiral and it now has an annual inflation rate of more than 26 000%, the highest in the world. Unemployment also stands at about 80%.
His name had been sometimes touted as a possible challenger to Mugabe from within the ranks of the Zanu-PF but the veteran president was confirmed as the party’s candidate at its annual conference last December.
A few facts about Simba Makoni
Makoni, who turns 58 on March 26, studied chemistry in Britain, gaining a BSc and a PhD.
At independence in 1980, Makoni was appointed deputy minister of agriculture. Over the next four years he served as minister of energy and of youth before leaving the government.
Makoni returned to Zimbabwe in December 1993 after nine years in Botswana as executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). In March 1994 he was appointed chief executive of state-controlled Zimbabwe Newspapers.
Makoni became finance minister in 2000. He pledged tighter fiscal discipline to restore relations with foreign donors in a package to revive Zimbabwe’s struggling economy.
However a year later, he said the country’s economy was in crisis and poverty was spreading at an alarming rate. He said: ”I would have to be foolish to deny what is evident to everybody in broad daylight, even in the darkness of night.”
In 2002 Makoni resigned in a policy row with the government. It was reported that he was not sacked. Makoni had been pressing the government to officially devalue the Zimbabwe dollar. Mugabe branded those calling for a devaluation ”economic saboteurs”, which was interpreted as a direct attack on Makoni. — AFP, Reuters