/ 21 December 2008

Mugabe refuses to go to ‘political death’

President Robert Mugabe again dismissed demands that he step down on Saturday, saying he would not go to his “political death” and urged his party to be ready for new polls in Zimbabwe.

The 84-year-old leader used his Zanu-PF party’s 10th annual congress to brush off international pressure to quit office as his country buckles under a ruinous political crisis, economic meltdown and a cholera epidemic.

“It doesn’t matter what happens, Zimbabwe is my country,” the veteran president told the conference, a day after declaring he would “never surrender”.

“They now want to topple the Mugabe government. ‘Mugabe must go because Bush is going’,” he said, referring to United States President George Bush, who leaves office in January and who is among the world leaders to have called for his resignation.

“Zimbabweans will refuse that one of their sons must accompany Bush to his political death,” Mugabe said in a speech that lambasted familiar targets.

Mugabe urged his party to remain united to avoid a repeat of its historic election defeat in March, when the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won control of Parliament.

However, the MDC ceded the presidency to Mugabe when challenger Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of a second-round run off citing violence against his supporters.

Mugabe, who has threatened early elections, urged his Zanu-PF party to shape up for possible new polls.

“We don’t want to be shamed again like what happened in March,” he said. “If elections are called we should be confident of victory. Provinces should start strengthening the party.

“The message from the meeting is that we must be united against all forces of disunity, all forces within and outside the country that seek to destroy our one-ness.”

Mugabe also vowed that controversial land-reform policies would not change. “We will never allow regression in regard to our land policy,” he said.

Wrapping up his speech, Mugabe broke into an often repeated slogan: “Zimbabwe will never be …” he chanted, and the crowd completed with “… a colony again.”

Divisions
The party held its conference against a backdrop of internal division and mounting international pressure to agree to a power-sharing deal with Tsvangirai’s MDC, despite stalled talks.

Zanu-PF’s central committee acknowledged internal divisions in a conference report, admitting the party “has been facing factionalism within its ranks for a long time”.

It said the effects of two high-profile defections from the party, when top officials Simba Makoni and Dumiso Dabenga left before the March elections, were “still posing a serious threat”.

One delegate told Agence France-Presse that division within the party was a result of people bribing their way into party positions.

“There is a lot of corruption in the distribution of inputs given out by government. We hear on radio and TV about things that the government is giving to people but they don’t reach us,” said the delegate, who declined to be named.

Zanu-PF and the MDC have failed to implement a power-sharing deal in which Mugabe would remain president while Tsvangirai would become prime minister.

Mugabe threatened this month to hold elections “in the next one-and-a-half to two years” if the power-sharing arrangement fails.

Taking a dig at his rival, Mugabe told supporters: “Tsvangirai has no programme except to say ‘Mugabe must go so that I can go to State House and my wife can cook for me at state house’.”

In addition to the political crisis, Zimbabwe, once a role model economy in Africa, is facing inflation of about 231-million percent while a cholera outbreak has killed more than 1 120 people. — AFP