Moyo calls on Mugabe to quit

Moyo calls on Mugabe to quit

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• Moyo warns Zanu PF may lose poll

• Mugabe says Moyo plotted coup

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• Moyo vacates government house, moves to Byo

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• Moyo launches major push for Tsholotsho

• Moyo's new coalition to challenge Mugabe

• High Court gives Moyo 2 weeks to vacate

• Mugabe's former spin doctor battles eviction

• Tawanda Hove: 'No tears for Moyo'

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• ADMORE TSHUMA: Jonathan Moyo, my hero

• PROFILE: JONATHAN NATHANIEL MOYO

• Moyo angers ex-Cabinet colleagues with tribal slur

• Full text of Moyo's reply to dismissal from government

• Moyo slams Zanu PF 'politics of patronage'

• Mugabe drops Moyo from Cabinet

• Mugabe's spin doctor quits, goes independent

• Msika snubs Moyo's Tsholotsho plea

• Moyo bombshell: Gukurahundi killed my dad

• Matsanga delights in Moyo's misfortunes

• Moyo sues Dabengwa, Nkomo for $2bln

• Zanu PF lifts Langa, Ncube's suspension

• Moyo: 'Tsholotsho will hold Nkomo to account'

• Moyo lays into Nkomo, Dabengwa as Zanu PF stalls on Tsholotsho

By Staff Reporter

ZIMBABWE'S controversial former minister of information, Professor Jonathan Moyo, Friday launched a scathing attack on President Robert Mugabe, blaming him for the country`s current economic crisis, and urging him to resign for the national good.

Writing in a local newspaper, Moyo said Zimbabwe could not afford Mugabe`s rule any day longer because of the crisis, which has seen the country`s economy shrink by more than 30 percent in the last five years. Moyo said his former boss, who dismissed him at the beginning of the year, had no capacity to lead the country due to advanced age and failing health, making it imperative for a new leader to take over.

Mugabe is 81 and has no reported health problems.

"Perennial wisdom from divine revelation and human experience dictates that all earthly things, great or small, beautiful or ugly, good or bad, sad or happy, foolish or wise, must finally come to an end.

"It is from this sobering reality that the end of executive rule has finally come for Robert Mugabe who has had his better days after a quarter of a century in power," Moyo wrote.

"That Mugabe must go now is thus no longer a dismissible opposition slogan, but a strategic necessity that desperately needs urgent legal and constitutional action by Mugabe himself well ahead of the presidential election scheduled for March 2008 in order to safeguard Zimbabwe`s national interest, security and sovereignty," he said.

Moyo added: "One does not need to be a malcontent to see that, after 25 years of controversial rule and with the economy melting down as a direct result of that rule, Mugabe`s continued stay in office has become such an excessive burden to the welfare of the state and such a fatal danger to the public interest of Zimbabweans at home and in the diaspora that each day that goes by with him in office leaves the nation`s survival at great risk, while seriously compromising national sovereignty."

Moyo, who defended Mugabe fervently while in his cabinet, said his former boss had pursued wrong policies which have led to economic slump, and Zimbabwe`s isolation internationally.

Mugabe dismissed Moyo after he defied his party to stand as an independent candidate in the parliamentary elections last March. Moyo won a parliamentary seat, beating candidates of the ruling party and the opposition.

Since leaving cabinet, the former university lecturer has become a sharp critic of the government, but had until now refrained from attacking Mugabe directly.

"If there is one unified truth among otherwise divided Zimbabweans, a truth now also ringing true within governmental centres of regional, continental and international opinion, it is that the country`s seven- year-old economic recession will worsen as it gets wider and deeper beyond fuel shortages unless and until there is a far-reaching political settlement of the... Zimbabwean leadership question," Moyo wrote.
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