ZIMBABWE PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe, who was 88 yesterday, says he has the right to ignore regional mediation efforts in his country’s political crisis and push ahead with elections to end the country’s stalled powersharing arrangement.
In an interview on state-run Radio Zimbabwe on Monday evening to mark his birthday, Mr Mugabe said as president he could sideline South African president Jacob Zuma, the regionally appointed mediator, if he was against holding elections this year.
“We can reject Zuma in broad daylight. We have already told him that,” Associated Press news agency reported Mr Mugabe as saying. “We have said, ‘No, we are not forced to accept him.’ But we don’t want to do that [reject him]; We don’t want to fight each other.”
Mr Zuma and the Movement for Democratic Change, Mr Mugabe’s coalition partners, have maintained that political reforms – including the creation of a new constitution – need to be adopted before elections can take place, to ensure they are free and fair. However, Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party fear that unless elections take place soon, their leader will be too old to participate effectively.
The airing of Mr Mugabe’s interview coincided with fresh calls from a group of his supporters to have the remains of British colonialist Cecil Rhodes exhumed from his grave near Bulawayo in the south of the country and returned to England. Zimbabwe’s Radio VOP network reported the group seeking Rhodes’ removal included senior Zanu-PF officials and war veterans, and that they travelled to his grave, which is a tourism site, last week to make their feelings clear to officials.
Calls to have Rhodes’ remains exhumed nearly 110 years after the colonial pioneer was laid to rest in 1902 have been made a number of times since Zimbabwe gained its independence in 1980. When Rhodes was buried his grave lay inside Rhodesia, a British territory the multi-millionaire politician established in his own name.
A rise in anti-British rhetoric is not uncommon in Zimbabwe around election times and occasions connected to Mr Mugabe. Africa’s oldest leader gave interviews to state media that were broadcast ahead of his birthday.
In another interview on state television on Monday, Mr Mugabe poked fun at the continuous speculation over his health, saying he had died many times, according to the media. “That’s where I’ve beaten Christ. Christ died once and resurrected once,” he joked. “The day will come when I will become sick, but as of now I am fit as a fiddle.” When asked what was behind his longevity, he said regular exercise, combined with abstinence from alcohol and cigarettes.
Even though most Zimbabweans are struggling to survive, Zanu-PF has organised a party that will reportedly cost more than €750,000 for their leader next weekend in Mutare, a city east of capital Harare. South Africa's Mail an Guardiannewspaper reported the 21 February Movement had been planning the bash. Three-course meals, a concert, a "Miss 21st Movement" beauty pageant and the "Bob 88 Super Cup" football tournament have been lined up, it said.