Business Day Live
By Ray Ndlovu
25th May 2016
THOUSANDS of backers of Zimbabwe’s ruling party marched in the capital on Wednesday in support of President Robert Mugabe.
“This is a special event by our dynamic youth league in support of our icon,” Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front spokesman Simon Khaya Moyo said. “The theme of the march is solidarity with the visionary and iconic leadership of our glorious party under President Mugabe.”
Zanu (PF)’s youth league staged the march in Harare on Wednesday to coincide with Africa Day celebrations, with President Robert Mugabe insisting he would stay on as leader despite calls for him to step down.
The march, dubbed the “million-man march”, was named partly due to the 100,000 people in attendance drawn from each of the party’s 10 provinces, and was meant to show support for Mugabe’s rule.
Party supporters, bused into the capital Harare from the country’s 10 provinces, were gathering at assembly points on Wednesday to march to Robert Mugabe Square, near the party headquarters, west of the city centre.
“We know that there’s a lot of negative publicity spread by private media and the West, to the extent that our grassroots supporters are now confused, so this march is to restore confidence,” Zanu-PF Youth League Deputy Secretary Kudzi Chipanga said late Tuesday by phone.
Chipanga used the march to criticise government ministers for corruption and inefficiency.
“Government officials and executives in the corporate sector are hardly ever in their offices. We don’t see them, and their lifestyles don’t match their incomes,” he said in a speech near the ruling party’s headquarters. Ministers seemed to “be competing” to change their cars faster than their shoes, he said.
Mr Mugabe returned from Singapore on Tuesday night with his wife Grace and their daughter Bona Mugabe-Chikore who recently gave birth in that country to a baby boy.
Flanked by his wife, Mugabe said the march was “a great revolutionary act” and had been well organised by the youth league.
“I would like to thank the youth league of Zanu (PF) for this great revolutionary act. It was run and organised by them and with the support of women…they championed it right through, they travelled…and organised the people for this march, indeed they were determined it would succeed,” he said.
No difference
“It won’t make any difference,” David Coltart, a former opposition education minister, senator and human rights lawyer said in a phone interview from Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo, on Wednesday. “People will still wake up on Friday hungry and jobless.”
Jonas Nyaungwa, who sells tomatoes and kale to passers-by in the capital’s sprawling Mbare Market, said the march was a farce.
“I’ve been forced to close my stall for the day and take part. It’s ridiculous, but I dare not argue, even though the march is for what?” Nyaungwa said. “For nothing, because nothing will change. It’s just a demonstration of power.”
Challenges
In power since 1980, Mugabe’s rule is facing increasing challenges. These include worsening factional fights in Zanu (PF) not least due to Mugabe’s advanced age, dissent from the war veterans group and a struggling economy which has thrown off the rails the promises he made in 2013 of economic prosperity.
In two months’ time the central bank is set to introduce so-called “bond notes” — equivalent to a local currency — a measure meant to deal with the severe liquidity crisis in the US dollar-dominated economy, which has seen Mugabe’s administration failing to pay its 500,000 public servants on time.
The country’s largest opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvangirai, has exploited the growing pressures to demand for Mugabe to step down. It is also rolling out nationwide demonstrations of its own to force him to leave office.
An MDC legislator, James Maridadi, is at the forefront of pushing for the impeachment of the 92-year-old from office. “The fact that impeachment of a sitting Head of State is provided for in the Constitution means that it can be done within the provisions outlined therein. I should hasten to say impeaching a sitting Head of State is not a declaration of war, but a constitutional and polite way of asking that we be given an opportunity to elect someone else to that office,” he said.
In his unscripted speech Mugabe dared the MDC on where they wanted him to go, saying he was an elected official who won the 2013 elections.
“They say Mr Mugabe must go, he must go to where? I am not a British, neither am I a Yankee. That is why I told Tony Blair to keep his England and I would keep my Zimbabwe. Why would they want me to retire? Is it out of pity that the MDC wants me to retire? Tell the papers that Mugabe says you must go hang, hang yourself. I feel it is a disservice to the people to retire for as long as I can do my best, but when time comes I will go,” he said.