Zimbabwe’s President Faces Battle To Hold Onto Office
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President Mugabe faces a showdown with his party Friday as factions squabbled over whether he should be their presidential candidate next year and rule Zimbabwe until 2013.
As Mr. Mugabe headed back from a frosty and morale-sapping meeting with African leaders in Tanzania, the powerful central committee of his Zanu-PF regime was preparing for a turbulent session over who should lead the country out of its current crisis.
The conflicting signals from within Zimbabwe’s political elite suggest that Mr. Mugabe, 83, will not have it his own way — as he has since coming to power in 1980.
Divisions within his party have crystallized since his latest crackdown on Morgan Tsvangirai and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
“This is an anxious moment for him and the meeting will be full of tension,” said Eldred Masunungure, a senior political analyst at the University of Zimbabwe.
Pressure mounted on Mr. Mugabe yesterday when the Southern African Development Community appointed South Africa’s President Mbeki to mediate in the crisis, a sign that they wanted the region’s most powerful country to find a solution to Zimbabwe’s political and economic meltdown.
Whatever diplomatic language the Tanzanian president Jakaya Kikwete chose in public, it is believed that, behind closed doors, African leaders effectively told Mr. Mugabe that they could protect him no longer. Mr. Mugabe’s mantra — that the West wants to recolonize Zimbabwe — has now worn thin even with his most dogged African supporters.
They, like his countrymen are “sick and tired of the endless drama over Zimbabwe,” said one African diplomat.
The president has been impervious to Western criticism, but has always counted on Africa to support his excesses. Inside his party are those who are determined — almost at any cost — to stop him becoming their candidate in the 2008 presidential poll. But whether they have the courage to obstruct him Friday or wait for a more “appropriate” moment is unclear.
“The tension within Zanu-PF at present might influence them to defer the decision until later in the year,” Mr. Masunungure said.
Mr. Mugabe’s former information minister, Jonathan Moyo, said he believed the central committee would delay the decision until December. He said it was traditional for Zanu-PF to make election decisions at the party’s annual conference in December.
