HARARE: Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe opened parliament yesterday, steering clear of a succession struggle raging in his ZANU-PF party following his wife’s sensational attempt to force his deputy out of office.
As the 90-year-old addressed the new parliament, dozens of ZANU-PF members sang his praises outside the building, but also taunted each other over factional allegiances in the party that has run Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980.
Mugabe, one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders, said he would invest in infrastructure, offer free fertiliser and seed to farmers and revise tax and labour laws to improve an investment climate clouded by his nationalist policies.
He made no direct reference to the succession battle in his party, which went into overdrive this month when his wife, Grace, attacked Vice-President Joice Mujuru and accused her of plotting to oust Mugabe at a party congress in December.
Mujuru, Mugabe’s deputy both in the party and government for the last 10 years, has been a frontrunner to succeed Mugabe but faces a stiff challenge from Justice Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, an enduring politician known as “The Crocodile”.
During more than three decades in power in the southern African country, analysts say Mugabe has neutralised challengers by playing off ZANU-PF factions, and may be doing the same with his wife’s sudden emergence into front-line politics.
Mujuru, a battle-hardened veteran of the 1970s liberation war with a nom de guerre that means ‘Spill Blood’, won Mugabe’s support for the vice-president post in 2004 but now appears to be in a precarious position ahead of this year’s congress.
Reuters
