Johannesburg - DA leader Mmusi Maimane has called for Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, who turned 93 on Tuesday, to be removed from power in the same way that Gambia’s dictator, Yahya Jammeh, was booted out last month.
He criticised the role played by the AU and the South African government
in propping up Mugabe’s
regime.
Mugabe is both respected and loathed throughout Africa and the world for his efforts in
Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, and his controversial policies on land and the economy, respectively.
When asked what his birthday message for Mugabe was, Maimane said on Tuesday: “I wish that he would recognise that at his age he should not continue being the president of Zimbabwe.
DA leader Mmusi Maimane has criticised the role played by the AU and the South African government in propping up Robert Mugabe’s regime.
“He must step aside so that we can enter into a post-liberation era He has ruled for too long and must step aside.”
Maimane was speaking in Johannesburg on the sidelines of the DA’s commemoration of the sinking of the SS Mendi troopship 100 years ago, which left more than 600 black South African soldiers dead.
Maimane said the AU, specifically in South Africa, had not sought to acknowledge democratic processes.
“We must stand for democracy. The Zimbabweans won the elections, the opposition won the elections and we (South Africa) negotiated a government of national unity, undermining the will of the people,” said Maimane.
He said “we must do to Zimbabwe” what had happened in Gambia, where the
Economic Community of West African States troops were
deployed, leading to Jammeh leaving the country.
Last month, EFF leader Julius Malema called on Mugabe to step down as he was no longer “capable of discharging his responsibilities. His overstay is not doing justice to the African revolution project. He is destroying his own legacy.
“We celebrate Mugabe. We celebrate what he has done and we will continue his legacy, but grandpa, it’s enough now. You must let go and allow other people to continue that legacy,” Malema said at the time.
Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF, however, has already endorsed Mugabe as its candidate for the national general election to be held next year.
First lady Grace Mugabe reportedly said: “If God decides to take him, then we would rather field him as a corpse (in the upcoming election).
“We will put his name on the ballot paper just to show that people love their president.”
Mugabe has made it clear that Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is effectively running the government, is not the “people’s choice” as his successor.
Mugabe himself says no “successor” to his rule has emerged since independence in 1980 and that the people want him as their candidate in next year’s elections.
Mnangagwa who, unlike Mugabe, fought in the war to end white rule, has long plotted and planned to take over from Mugabe when he dies or retires.
And he has been at Mugabe’s side for the past 40 years.
Many analysts say it was he who ensured that Zanu-PF won elections by fair means or foul since the emergence
of the Movement for Democratic Change in 2000.
Previously Grace Mugabe has said that if Mugabe was too frail to walk, she would push him around the country in a wheel barrow.
In an interview broadcast over his birthday week, Mugabe told the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation: “The majority of the people feel that there is no replacement, a successor, who to them is acceptable, as acceptable as I am.”