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SUPPORTERS OF ZIMBABWE’S President Robert Mugabe chanting “tongai, tongai baba” (rule, rule father) have endorsed the 92-year-old leader for a 2018 election run.
The endorsement, which is likely to result in his 36-year rule being extended, was greeted with thunderous applause by thousands of party faithful attending the ruling ZANU-PF’s annual conference.
Mugabe accepted dressed in a green floral jacket bearing his own portrait and a map of Zimbabwe.
The veteran leader has held power since independence from British colonial rule in 1980 and has always avoided naming a successor or laying out plans to retire.
He once joked that he would rule until he turned 100.
The conference, held in the southeastern town of Masvingo, voiced “its support to the president and first secretary comrade Robert Mugabe as the sole candidate for the forthcoming 2018 elections”, deputy secretary Eunice Sandi Moyo said.
The absence of a clear successor to Mugabe has sparked infighting including verbal exchanges on social media in recent weeks between factions angling for his position.
Accepting his endorsement, Mugabe called for unity among party supporters.
“We agreed that conflicts should end. Infighting should end. The party ideology should be followed,” he said.
Mugabe, who has been dogged by rumours of poor health and is usually animated during lengthy political addresses, spoke slowly during his short acceptance speech.
‘Rule forever’
He stressed that discipline among party members should be maintained and that “leaders should be respected”.
“Let us be one. We are one family, the family of ZANU-PF bound together by the fact of understanding between its members,” he said.
Large portraits of a younger Mugabe hung around a huge marquee where the conference was held, with the majority of the around 9,000 delegates donning shirts emblazoned with their leader’s face.
“We want President Mugabe to rule forever and ever because of his clear leadership,” one elated delegate, Janet Mazviwanza, told AFP.
Despite his popularity within the party ranks, Mugabe this year faced unprecedented calls for him to step down, including a series of rare public protests over his failure to turn the ailing economy around.
Critical cash shortages prompted the government at the end of November to introduce the much disliked ‘bond notes” — equivalent to the US dollar.
Unemployment in the country is currently at about 90 percent, and thousands of companies have closed in the last three years.
Zimbabwe abandoned its own dollar currency in 2009 after hyperinflation hit 500 billion percent rendering it unusable.
Among the protest groups at rallies in recent months have been university graduates who wore their gowns and caps to show their anger at the lack of jobs.
The street protests led police to ban demonstrations in the capital Harare, with some activists arrested by the police.
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Zimbabwe once the Bread Basket of Africa. Under Mugabe it became just another Basket Case in Africa.
The bread basket of Africa? Where did you come up with that from?
It was hugely agriculturally productive when managed properly once upon a time.
” It was found that agriculture used to be the mainstay of Zimbabwean economy more especially in the 1980s. However, the trend is reversed in the recent years as a result of basically political instability in the country. This development leads to a drastic reduction in the Zimbabwean agricultural output to the extent that the country can no longer feed itself.” – https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://www.academicjournals.org/article/article1380553915_Maiyaki.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwjkse3J4vvQAhXJAsAKHXF5BGIQFggfMAI&usg=AFQjCNFNc06RlKDII8xuhACPPq_uPjK10Q
@The Girl: I Lived in Zimbabwe. It was in the 80s and 90s known internally and regionally as “the breadbasket of Africa” because of the large amount of maize it produced. So much in fact that it was a net exporter of maize, the staple food, exporting many thousands of tons annually to Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique etc. Post 2000 and the land invasions, agricultural production plummeted, as did the economy which was heavily agro-reliant. What followed hyperinflation, collapse of economy and endemic corruption throughout led to the term “basket case” being used.
That’s what is was known as pre Mugabe. It exported massive amounts of food and other agricultural produce. It’s farms were some of the most productive on the continent. Farms that Mugabe stole, gave to his cronies and they let what was quality farmland return to scrub.
@Mick Jordan: Thats when it was called Rhodesia under British colonial rule, later screwed up by United Nations to make it independent Zimbabwe under Magabe rule. Rhodesia didn’t subscribe to apartheid like its neighbour South Africa. Britain should have told the Un to feck off over Rhodesia.
@Mick Jordan: Mugabe has been in power since 1980, when Zim became independent. Zim was known as the breadbasket of Africa for many years under Mugabe’s rule, it was only post 2000 that the economy collapsed.
@Dónal Mac Cormaic: The economy collapsed because Magabe pushed the good farmers off their land and handed over to his crony friends.
Some say black people cant be racist toward whites. Ol’ Robert sure showed them!
When you start dressing up with your own face on fabrics, you’re either full of yourself or a dictator…I think he’s both?
Trump could take a leaf out of his book.
@The Girl: he only wears this political fabric at political dos such as the most recent ZANU Ard Fheis in Masvingo. Otherwise its consevative suits
The good news is that he won’t live forever, and the bad news is that some other corrupt tyrant will get his job, and carry on the good works after he dies.
@Ted Murray: his wife Grace has ambitions
Suffer yee little children
You wonder, sometimes, how he is still alive. Maybe he sucks the life out of suspecting humans like a wraith. But anyway, doesn’t have my vote.
@Adrian Matthews: The lads in the polling station will correct your mistake it’s all good.
@Adrian Matthews: genes I guess. His mother lived to a good age. Being a multi millionaire helps.
Being allowed access to the very best hospitals in Europe doesn’t hurt either…
@Adrian, if there was oil in Zimbabwe he would be gone a long time ago!
@Lord Clanricarde: You can’t eat oil, Rhodesia was once a wealthy country where nobody went hungry….
@Poole Hyde: Singapore is his preferred destination for medical treatment.
Will Michael D. be offering his congratulations?
@Beachmaster: I doubt it
Place is a shit hole he’s ruined the place as so have so many so called liberators of African countries.
Give a beggar man a horses he’ll ride to hell!!!
No oil in Zimbabwe,the yanks are not tempted for a little tour of duty over there so.
There was none in France or Bosnia either
You’re saying you want the US to invade ?
South Africa is sitting on mugabes doorstep. Maybe theyd send their troops in to liberate the Zimbabweans? or what about Nigeria with africa’s largest military.africa should sort out its own affairs
Or maybe just maybe Zimbabwe should be left to it own devices for the next “hour or so” till either Mugabe dies or his own people have enough of him and drag him from power. Africa is too tribal and any outside interference even from other African countries would probably just galvanize his position and that of his successors leading to another clusterfuсk of an African war. Isolating it and letting the Mugabe legacy burn itself out is probably a better idea. Interestingly enough, if the diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks are to be believed the US did approach SA to try and orchestrate a “bloodless coup” and were told in no uncertain terms that outside interference could destabilize the entirety of sub Saharan Africa and make what’s happening in the middle east look tame in comparison.
Can you get the suit in pennys – put me down for one
In pennys today didn’t see any may be sold out.. I think it more Louie Copland style
Versace
Ye ugly looking like donnatella
The Adams of Africa.
thats a jacket conor mcgregor would be proud of.
36 years?
In political office almost as long as Enda Kenny.
@Alex Falcone: Mugabe has been in politics for over 50 years, he was imprisoned by the Smith regime in Gweru in the 1960s. After his release he went into exile in Mozambique from where he attacked Rhodesia until they conceded.
Zimbabwe!? What’s going on in Yemen, thejournal?
AAA must be delighted that their man in Zimbabwe gets another term.
He is an expert at creating wealth on a computer keyboard . In fact every citizen is a millionaire .
@Jimmy jones: Yes Jimmy due to hyperinflation every citizen was at one time a millionaire, in Zimbabwe dollar terms.
However since February 2009 the Zimbabwe dollar no longer exists, it was scrapped, and US dorsal (and other international currencies), so since then the number of millionaires (in US dollar terms) in Zim are few and far between. Mugabe and his cronies count for a lot of those that remain
Ah….democracy. African style.
I believe that the country on Jan 1st will be renamed South Mugabea!!!
Robert Mugabe now 92 years of age.
Only the good die young.
You are all misinformed about Zimbabwe. In Zimbabwe you will be told that the fact that Mugabe is wrong doesn’t make West right! Southern Africa is different from other parts of Africa.
The people of Zimbabwe like Him for his stance towards white hypocrisy and gay rights. Zimbabweans dont like the bullying of the West and how the West make themselves prefects of the world.
Zimbabweans are sober minded, they tell you that even though the effects of land reform are bad land belongs to the owners, black Zimbabweans. The Whites will only be compensated if they first compensate the Zimbabweans they chased away from that land into stoney infertile areas when they invade Zimbabwe.
THE WHITES CRY FOUL WHEN THE BLACKS ARE TAKING WHAT BELONGS TO THEM.
@Carlos Rotic: ZANU troll
He is looking for a hand out from the Paris Climate change fund, but Trump wont pay into it.
You are all misinformed about Zimbabwe.Southern Africa is not like other parts of Africa. In Zimbabwe you will be told that the fact that Mugabe is wrong doesn’t make the West right! This kind of thinking has made the region more peaceful
@Carlos Rotic: When he dies they will be mourning his great loss, before throwing him in a hole and forgetting about him. The sun rises over Zimbabre and sets in the west my friend, this is Africa.
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