Zimbabwe News Online: Mugabe Confirmed To Run Again For President 

Mugabe Confirmed To Run Again For President
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Denford Magora on 15 November, 2009 04:49:00
 
He's 85 years old and clearly in the "sunset" of his life, to use Ronald
Reagan's words, but members of ZANU PF clearly think that there is nobody more
qualified to be president of their party and the country than Robert Mugabe.
"The Solution", as Mugabe is referred to by Morgan Tsvangirai, has been
nominated for the post of president by nine of Zimbabwe's ten provinces, which
effectively means that he will be swept back into power within the long-ruling
ZANU PF.
All that will be left is for his party to unleash its customary violence and he
will be back in power as President of Zimbabwe.
Mugabe routinely tries to give the impression of not seeking the nomination for
president of his party, saying that if they ask him to stand, he will and if
they put up somebody else, then he would step aside.
In his recent interview with Christianne Amanpour of CNN, Mugabe was asked
point-black whether he would run again for president and he refused to answer
saying he was not going to give away such "strategic" information.
Now we know that nobody else is going to stand against the man. In the urban
areas and large swathes of rural Zimbabwe, Mugabe is hugely unpopular because of
the destruction of the economy under his watch.
So, is ZANU PF suicidal in nominating again?
No.
The party is well aware that, without Mugabe, their party is finished.
Mugabe is a bad man, no doubt about that, but this is also his salvation.
The psychology of Zimbabweans is one that glorifies the badness of such people
as Mugabe. You will recall that I told of an incident around the run-off, after
Tsvangirai had pulled out of the race and Mugabe had become president, flying
off to an African Summit soon thereafter. A guard at a premium banking hall at
Miekles Hotel was in conversation with a customer and bluntly said that he now
had huge respect for Mugabe.The words he used were: "Munhu wanda bigga
ndimudhara uyu manje." This was coming at the end of a conversation in which it
was clear to everyone that the guard was not a Mugabe supporter.  Yet his
ruthlessness in clawing his way back into power impressed this man.
It has been said over and over again by wishful-thinking MDC-Tsvangirai
supporters that there is no way Mugabe is going to run again, that this was his
last stand as president of the country and so on...
It is the greatest failing of the MDC-T leadership that they listen to such
nonsense from desperate supporters. In the process, they fail to strategise
around Mugabe and ZANU PF. The opposition party of the Prime Minister had now
essentially rested on its laurels, since Morgan Tsvangirai himself has now
decided that it is impossible to beat Mugabe in an election. Yes, getting power
through elections is not an option that the Prime Minister now considers viable.
The question is: can he survive another drubbing by Mugabe, no matter how unfair
and skewed that drubbing is?
To end, I must go back to last year's election. Since ZANU PF started ruling
Zimbabwe, the party has never been shaken the way it was shaken by Simba Makoni
in March. Mugabe's party was in disarray, with large numbers of their own
candidates supporting Makoni against Mugabe.If it were not for Makoni,
Tsvangirai would not have done as well as he did in March. The former Finance
Minister, who now has his own party, achieved what no other politician in
opposition politics has managed to achieve: split ZANU PF significantly and
emboldened those who opposed Mugabe to come out in droves to try and rid the
country of Mugabe.If he had not run, what we saw in June would have happened in
March anyway and the result would have been the same.
With Makoni building a formidable organisation across Zimbabwe with his new
party, Tsvangirai is unlikely to repeat the performance of March 2009.
Yet, like Mugabe, he is also refusing to engage the issue of leadership renewal.
He clings onto power and onto the office of President of the MDC-Tsvangirai.
This will be the undoing of his party.
Hope now basically lies in Makoni. As more and more people get disenchanted with
an MDC that does not have what it takes to deliver a killer blow to Mugabe,
Makoni's new party is emerging as the only one that is capable of significantly
eroding Mugabe's support base. As a non-violent and non-confrontational man, he
remains the one person who can neutralise the army effect in ZANU PF.
The future, as far as I can see, belongs not with Tsvangirai or with Mugabe, but
with the former Finance Minister. Time, yet again, will prove me right.