By Peta Thornycroft
Harare - Zimbabweans sat anxiously through an hour of President Robert Mugabe's annual birthday speech on Tuesday night hoping to hear when he would retire, and who would succeed him.
Instead they got a rambling hour-long interview in which all juicy details, speculated heavily in Harare, on Tuesday, had been edited out by the state broadcaster, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.
Impeccable sources close to Mugabe's Zanu-PF party said there had been "frantic" editing to cut out parts of the speech in which he anointed rural housing minister Emmerson Mnangagwa as his successor.
In the unedited interview, Mugabe also turned on his vice-president Joyce Mujuru, who was widely seen as the top contender to replace him as the Zanu-PF candidate in the presidential election due in March 2008.
Continues Below ↓
Instead of hearing Mugabe speak out about his own intentions, he spoke of corruption in his government, and of rampant inflation which he blamed largely on local businessmen and "illegal sanctions" by the West.
Mugabe has used divide and rule tactics to remain the undisputed leader of Zanu-PF and Zimbabwe since the end of British rule in 1980, and has been heavily backed by all the top generals in the security forces until now.
-
This article was originally published on page 4 of Daily News on February 21, 2007
|
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Digg
Delicious
Newsvine
Facebook
muti
Twitter
