Bob, God’s gift to Zim

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe

Published Dec 11, 2011

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Harare - Zimbabwe’s ailing 87-year-old president says he will not retire ahead of proposed elections next year and will stay on to lead the country against a Western campaign for “regime change”.

Robert Mugabe, addressing 6 000 delegates on Saturday at the end of his party’s annual convention in Bulawayo, says it would be “an act of cowardice” for him to step down. He has ruled Zimbabwe since 1980.

“Luckily, God has given me this longer life than others to be with you and I will not let you down,” he said.

The four-day convention passed resolutions confirming Mugabe as its sole presidential candidate and called for elections “early next year without fail”.

Mugabe, who turns 88 in February, looked fit and energetic in his red party jacket as he spoke on for two hours at the annual conference in Bulawayo.

Any hope younger party members had of a replacement for Mugabe finally disappeared when former army commander Solomon Mujuru died in August in a mysterious fire at his farm house.

Few believed the fire was an accident, including his widow Joyce, vice-president of the party and Mugabe’s most obvious and natural successor.

She has a far less tainted background than the other challenger, Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, chiefly responsible for massacres of Ndebele-speaking Zapu supporters in Matabeleland in the 1980s. – Sapa-AP

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