90- year-old Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, one of Africa’s most divisive figures, ascended to the rotating chairmanship of the African Union on Friday, casting a shadow over the continental body’s relations with the West.
Mugabe, the only leader Zimbabwe has known since independence from Britain in 1980, assumed the largely ceremonial role at an AU summit in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Reuters says.
Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, on Friday said his party could roll out protests against President Robert Mugabe’s government over its inability to improve a flagging economy.
Tsvangirai has led the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) since 1999 and in April he sacked his secretary general who was calling for him to step down after losing a third election to Mugabe in 2013, which some Western observers said was rigged.
Tsvangirai, a former trade union leader, said the country had an unsustainably high unemployment rate, estimated above 80 percent, which forced many people into informal employment.
After posting strong growth during four years of Mugabe and Tsvangirai’s unity government between 2009-2013, the economy is suffering a dollar crunch due to lack of foreign investment, forcing many firms to shut down or keep workers without pay.
“We are going to mobilise. The form and content is left to the MDC to plan and execute,” Tsvangirai told journalists.
A senior MDC official told Reuters mass protests were “very much an option.”
Previous anti-Mugabe protests, the last one in 2007, have been met by a heavy police and military resistance, but Tsvangirai said the veteran leader would be making a mistake by setting security forces against the public.
“Let him be warned that if we cannot live as free men and women in our country of birth, we will rather die as free people,” said Tsvangirai.
•Mugabe accuses Nigerians of corruption!
When one corrupt country is calling another corrupt country names, it should call for laughter by the international community. Corruption in Nigeria and Zimbabwe is legendary, the former in West Africa, and the latter in South Africa.
President Robert Mugabe seized the opportunity of his 90th birthday luncheon hosted by service chiefs and the public commission to castigate Nigerians as corrupt. Comparing Zimbabweans to Nigerians would be offensive to Mugabe who feels that Zimbabweans are now almost behaving like Nigerians who have to take gratification before every service is rendered. Hear him: “Are we now like Nigeria where you have to reach your pockets to corruptly pay for everything”. He added: “You see, we used to go to Nigeria and every time we went there we had to carry extra cash in our pockets to corruptly pay for everything. You get into plane in Nigeria and you sit there and the crew keeps dilly-dallying without taking off as they wait for you to pay them to fly the plane”. President Mugabe’s swipe at Nigeria was followed by a huge laughter from the people at the luncheon.
Disgraceful as Mugabe’s comments on Nigeria might be, we, in good conscience, find it difficult to defend Nigeria because everything Mugabe said about Nigeria is common knowledge, even to Nigerians. Instances of corruption in Nigeria and Zimbabwe are well documented. The current corruption rating in the world ranks corruption in Zimbabwe a lot worse than Nigeria’s. Nigeria is ranked 163rd most corrupt country in the world while Zimbabwe sits at an embarrassing 170th position, a third from the rear, apart from local and international criticisms of his (Mugabe’s) regime which he enjoys, in spite of his notoriously bad governance, old age and reputation as a sit-tight president.
We have never hidden our feelings against Nigeria as a corrupt nation. Thus, while we could agree with the observations that led Mugabe to accuse Nigerians of corruption, we can say that there was nothing to warrant Mugabe’s outburst against Nigeria on the occasion of such a celebration like his 90th birthday. But he has said it, whatever the occasion. What should worry us is the fact that Mugabe singled out Nigeria for attack.
Why is it that he did not accuse Ghana, Ivory Coast, Gambia, South Africa or Lesotho of corruption? It is a pity that Nigeria has given Mugabe the license to say what he said about Nigeria, probably because Mugabe knows that Nigeria is only slightly better than Zimbabwe with regard to corruption. This is however a clarion call for Nigerians and their leaders.
As things are today, President Mugabe knew what he was talking about. It does not matter whether we think Zimbabwe and Nigeria are corrupt, what Mugabe might be saying, and was out to demonstrate might be that the ‘giant of Africa’ called Nigeria cannot lead Africa because of massive corruption in the country. The only sad aspect of it all is that the Nigerian president, Goodluck Jonathan, does not see what everyone else is seeing. To him, things are not as bad as they are being painted about Nigeria and corruption. This is the real tragedy of the whole matter because if the person who is supposed to fight corruption says it is being blown out of proportion, it means he does not see any need to lead the anti-corruption war. This can only spell doom for the country. Anyway, thanks, but no thanks, President Mugabe.
Robert Mugabe, the bellicose and tenacious nonagenarian President of Zimbabwe, gave Nigeria such a hefty piece of his mind during his birthday luncheon last week that many people were left nonplussed. A few Southern African leaders, including the late Nelson Mandela, often felt disgusted by Nigeria’s mediocre achievements, but until now they vented their frustrations behind closed doors. Last week, however, Mr Mugabe could no longer hide his exasperation. Said he while reproving Zimbabweans at the luncheon hosted by his country’s Service Chiefs and Public Commission: “Are we now like Nigeria where you have to reach your pocket to get anything done? You see, we used to go to Nigeria and every time we went there, we had to carry extra cash in our pockets to corruptly pay for everything. You get into a plane in Nigeria and you sit there and the crew keeps dilly dallying without taking off as they want you to pay them to fly the plane.”
Not quite one week after Mr Mugabe made the scathing remark about Nigeria’s well-known romance with corruption, President Goodluck Jonathan visited next door Namibia. Meeting with the Nigerian community in Windhoek, the country’s capital city, the president described talk of corruption in Nigeria as unduly celebrated. Corruption is everywhere in the world, he said tersely, but because Nigerians talk about it effusively (perhaps he meant to say report it), the country is stigmatised everywhere. Contemplate the president’s weird logic for a moment, if you can. His problem, it seems, is that talk of corruption is celebrated in Nigeria, not that it exists on the scale the world is familiar with. If only we could bury it or de-emphasise it, all would be well, so thought the president in Namibia.
But did Dr Jonathan rebut Mr Mugabe’s conclusions? Was the Zimbabwean president’s perception coloured by our boisterous celebration of talk of corruption, rather than the plain, hideous fact of our corruption? Indeed, is there anyone, Nigerian or foreigner, who needs anyone’s report to appreciate the maddening delight Nigerians take in corruption? Can anyone truly get anything done in Nigeria without, as Mr Mugabe put it dishearteningly, paying for it? There is absolutely no doubt what the answers are, even if Dr Jonathan buries his head in the sand, pretending not to know how he has by his lack of diligence magnified the inventiveness of corrupt Nigerians and coloured the sham heroism of the anti-corruption agencies.
In Windhoek, Dr Jonathan also talked about the futility of fighting corruption with a sledgehammer. Alas, he gives the false impression he is fighting corruption with anything at all, sledgehammer or plastic hammer. If anyone requires proof of how Dr Jonathan is fighting corruption, assuming any fighting is going on at all, let him ask the president’s ministers, especially the former Minister of Aviation, Stella Oduah, and the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Diezani Alison-Madueke, who is alleged to have frittered away billions on egotistic plane junkets.
Mr Mugabe did not exaggerate. On the contrary, it is Dr Jonathan who is living in denial. Africans know us well for who we are. So, too, do many other world leaders, even if they humour us with sympathetic words and gestures. The reputation of a corrupt Nigeria is not one Dr Jonathan can get rid of with his feather touches and kitchen midden policies, not even if his past years of slack policies and bureaucratic lassitude were rewarded with another four undeserving years.
Zimbabweans are voting in fiercely contested presidential and parliamentary elections which have already been hit by fraud allegations, BBC reports.
President Robert Mugabe, 89, has said he will step down after 33 years in power if he and his Zanu-PF party lose.
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has accused Zanu-PF of doctoring the electoral roll, a charge it has denied.
Campaigning was mostly peaceful, with few reports of intimidation.
Zanu-PF and the MDC have shared an uneasy coalition government since 2009 under a deal brokered to end the deadly violence that erupted after a disputed presidential poll the previous year.
Mr. Tsvangirai won the most votes in the first round, but pulled out of the run-off with Mr. Mugabe because of attacks on his supporters.
The government has barred Western observers from monitoring Wednesday’s elections, but the African Union (AU) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC), as well as local organisations, have been accredited.
Polls opened at 07:00 local time (05:00 GMT) and are due to close at 17:00 GMT.
The turnout is expected to be high among the 6.4 million people registered to vote, with tens of thousands of people attending rallies in recent weeks. Results are expected within five days.
Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe signed a new constitution into law on Wednesday, replacing a 33-year-old document forged in the dying days of British colonial rule and paving the way for elections later this year.
The constitution, approved overwhelmingly in a referendum in March, clips the powers of the president and imposes a two-term limit.
However, it does not apply retroactively so the 89-year-old Mugabe could extend his 33 years in power by another decade, Reuters says.
A beaming Mugabe, flanked by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, his main political rival, and deputy president Joice Mujuru, signed multiple copies of the charter at State House in the capital, Harare.
Aides and other politicians present at the signing broke into applause the moment the veteran leader put down his pen.
The constitution was formed as part of a power-sharing deal between Mugabe and Tsvangirai after disputed and violent elections in 2008.
The five-year coalition parliament formed under the same agreement expires on June 29, and parliamentary and presidential elections should follow within 90 days of that date.