Mugabe to stay for six more years

Mugabe to stay for six more years - Mutasa

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By Staff Reporter

ZIMBABWE'S ruling party has resolved differences over a power struggle to succeed President Robert Mugabe and backed him to stay in office for another six years, a senior official said Sunday.

Didymus Mutasa, the powerful State Security Minister, said Mugabe's succession was now off the agenda.

"There is absolutely nothing to talk about the succession issue any more for the next six years because we shall have the president as our leader. He is not going to be succeeded for that period," Mutasa told state media.

Mutasa acknowledged two main factions in Zanu PF had vied for supremacy over who would replace 83-year-old Mugabe. But he said both factions now "closed ranks" behind Mugabe's continued role as president.

The party agreed Mugabe could not leave when he was needed by both the party and the nation facing what he described as "difficulties," Mutasa is reported to have said.

"So it was quite right of him (Mugabe) to say: ... 'I am not going away, I cannot be running away from a burning house. I should stay and put out the fire,' " said Mutasa.

He insisted Mugabe's decision to stay on until at least 2013, when he would be almost 90, did not leave the party divided.

"As trained and loyal liberation fighters, everyone was rallying around the incumbent leader," Mutasa said.

The tenor of Mutasa's remarks was reminiscent of several previous occasions when Mugabe, Mutasa and other close loyalists clamped down on calls within the party for Mugabe, the only ruler since independence in 1980, to step down.

In 2004, the ruling party faced its deepest split over Mugabe's choice of Joyce Mujuru, wife of the influential former army commander Gen. Solomon Mujuru, as the nation's second vice president. She became the first woman in the post and effectively blocked former Parliament Speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa's place as first in line to replace Mugabe.

Mugabe railroaded Mujuru into office but last year relations between the two cooled as Gen. Mujuru became increasingly critical of Mugabe and the couple's faction strengthened against Mnangagwa's group.

Mugabe's critics blame him for the southern African nation's economic meltdown, citing mismanagement, his failure to curb high-level graft and for sanctioning state-orchestrated violence against opponents, including the assaults by police.

Official inflation is running at 2,200 percent and Zimbabwe faces acute shortage of hard currency, gasoline, food and most basic goods.

Five-yearly parliamentary and presidential polls are scheduled next March and there had been suggestions Mugabe might later step down after winning a clean sweep against the fractured opposition, making way for at least fresh economic reforms.

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