Mugabe's cabinet 'too little, too late' - MDC
Harare - Zimbabwe's opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, on Sunday voiced scepticism over the new cabinet announced by President Robert Mugabe in the wake of last month's general elections, saying it was "too little, too late".
Mugabe summoned journalists to State House late on Saturday - the same day he launched his controversial land reform programme - and read out a list of 17 full ministers and two heads of department, including 10 new ministers.
Tsvangirai, head of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) who nevertheless failed to win a seat in the elections, said: "This government is like putting new oil into an old engine," adding:
"The real problem is Mugabe."
Tsvangirai said: "It doesn't matter what kind of people he puts into his cabinet. Those people he puts into the cabinet have no political base. It doesn't augur well for the country."
Tsvangirai had made it clear after the elections that the MDC would not be part of the government.
In an interview with the iindependent Standard published on Sunday, Tsvangirai said: "I do not see this cabinet delivering as long as Mugabe is there, and these people will just be sacrificial lambs."
For his part, fiery war veterans leader Chenjerai "Hitler" Hunzvi appeared to widen his rift with the government on Sunday as ZBC radio reported that he was disturbed that the new cabinet did not include a minister for war veterans.
Hunzvi, whose followers spearheaded the invasions of hundreds of white-owned farms since February, did not get a cabinet post despite intense local speculation he would be awarded the war veterans portfolio.
While welcoming the new cabinet, Hunzvi said on ZBC that war veterans "are not comfortable because they have no representation in the new cabinet".
In the previous cabinet, Witness Mangwende was the minister of state in the president's office responsible for war veterans.
Hunzvi issued a direct challenge to the government on Saturday by saying his war veterans would not move off farms not designated for government acquisition in the land reform programme.
Vice President Robert Msika had said earlier that war veterans would be "shifted" off the land.
"Where we are on the farms there is no one who is going to move us out of those farms," Hunzvi told war veterans, who, farmers reported recently, are irritated that the government is taking too long to resettle blacks.
Mugabe had, during the election campaign, openly encouraged the war veterans' farm occupation campaign, refusing to order the war veterans off the land.
The Standard crowed over Hunzvi's "conspicuous absence" from the new cabinet.
The Standard was also pleased that several former government heavyweights were "booted out", saying: "Chen, Zvobgo, Kangai on the street," referring to information minister Chen Chimutengwende, minister without portfolio Eddison Zvobgo and lands and agriculture minister Kumbirai Kangai, currently facing fraud charges.
Zvobgo had been in the government since independence in 1980.
Also absent from the cabinet is Mugabe's right-hand man Emmerson Mnangagwa, whom many had seen as a successor to the 76-year-old president.
The state-owned Sunday Mail called the line-up a "new-look cabinet", stressing that Mugabe had brought in "respected personalities in the field of finance and business who are expected to tackle the country's economic woes", including former SADC secretary-general Simba Makoni, who is the new finance minister.
Mugabe has presided over a steadily declining economy, now at its lowest ebb since the start of his 20 years at the helm. - Sapa-AFP
Published on the Web by IOL on 2000-07-16 15:07:01
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