Zimbabwe
Tsvangirai and Mugabe exchange threats

afrol.com, 2 October - This weekend, MDC opposition leader Tsvangirai addressed a crowd of 20.000 at Rufaro Stadium in Harare, celebrating the party's first anniversary. "If you don't want to go peacefully we will remove you violently," he said, referring to Mugabe. A spokesman of the governing party, ZANU-PF, yesterday replied on state television that his party had the capacity to respond to any violence with violence.

 

MDC president  M. Tsvangirai

There was no point in waiting for the 2002 presidential elections, Tsvangirai claimed. "Mugabe would still rig the votes." The MDC leader demanded changes now, and said he would even prefer vice-president Simon Muzenda to Mugabe. Mugabe "should accept he is old, that he has destroyed the country, he should accept the time is up. We say he should accept the demands of the people for him to retire peacefully".

- The time for national action is now. We cannot allow him to destroy what is left, he told the cheering crown. "This country can no longer afford Mugabe a day longer than necessary. We can't wait for 2002."

- What we would like to tell Mugabe today is that please go peacefully, and if you don't want to go peacefully we will remove you violently, Tsvangirai said. As the press later asked him to specify what he meant by removing Mugabe violently, he claimed he was only referring to mass action against the president. "We are saying the power of the people will remove him," he explained.

Tsvangirai's critics of the president were following this week's first public statements of former South African president Nelson Mandela against Mugabe. "I would have wished that somebody would talk to him (Mugabe) to say: 'Look, you have been in office for 20 years. It's time to step down,'" Mandela said in an interview with a South African newspaper on Friday. 

Nathan Shamuyarira, spokesman of the governing ZANU-PF, yesterday replied on state television that his party had the capacity to respond to any violence with violence. "We are going to fight violence with violence in order to protect the people of Zimbabwe," Shamuyarira said.

- It's a shocking statement coming from an opposition leader who claims to be democratic, what kind of democracy is that? Shamuyarira saintly responded on behalf of the ZANU-PF. "We are not going to allow the people to be maimed and killed because of Morgan Tsvangirai's desire to be in power". With "only" one and a half year to go before the presidential elections, there are not many promising signs for political dialogue in Zimbabwe. 

Meanwhile, the country's economic situation keeps worsening from day to day. The World Bank now is to formally classify Zimbabwe among the world's poorest economies. Zimbabwe has been in arrears for the past six months. Inflation has reached 120% and the country owes US$ 383 million in debt repayments, including US$ 47 million to the bank. According to an analysis by the South African Mail and Guardian, this means classifying "Zimbabwe as one of the world's worst economic pariahs, with potentially damaging consequences for South Africa and the entire sub-continent."

Source: Based on MDC and Mail & Guardian

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