04/07/2013 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe called on Zanu PF candidates to reach out to colleagues defeated in divisive party primaries as he rallied his troops for general elections which will now go ahead at the end of the month.
Zanu PF is working to prevent a number of officials who registered to contest the elections as independent candidates after either questioning their defeats in party primaries or being completely blocked from contesting.
The party is concerned the rebels could fatally divide its support base in the key elections which will choose a successor to the coalition government.
Mugabe told a meeting of Zanu PF’s central committee at the its Harare headquarters Thursday that the party must fight the forthcoming elections as a united front.
“The duty that we all have now and especially those of us who have won and been nominated to stand for the party is to ensure that those who opposed us will support us,” he said.
“You have to sit with them individually and talk. Work out a common strategy so that there is no Bhora Musango. Let us win them over. We must go into the election battle united.
“Apart from individuals, our organs must now also assist the process of unity by appealing to those who lost to become supportive of those who won and support the national struggle. This election is a national struggle.
“Let us also try as much as possible if we are in a better situation financially to assist those in situations of need … All of us must arouse the people’s revolutionary enthusiasm which I noticed from the queues we had exist among us. Get as many people to vote as possible.”
The Zanu PF leader, who turned 89 this year and his ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980, will seek another five year-term in office when he leads Zanu PF in the crucial elections.
In 2009, he was forced to share power with bitter rival Morgan Tsvangirai who won the first round of the presidential ballot in 2008 before pulling out of the run-off vote, claiming the Zanu PF leader had unleashed violence against his supporters.
But on Thursday, Mugabe said the coalition arrangement had been a “strategic retreat” for his party and not a humiliation.
“Yes, we have had four and half years, going to be five years perhaps, of this ugly creature - the inclusive Government that we went into because we had slept and missed our revolutionary step . . . A disastrous fall,” he said.
“It was a sudden (fall) from which we rose and looked around and said the time demands that we use tactics. Some might not have understood us but revolutionaries when they suffer a reversal they do not call it defeat.
“It was time for us to reflect and assess the mistake we made along the way and try to win as much support as possible. It was time for us to walk cautiously . . . All this after humiliation of having to work with those who never believed in the ideals of the revolutionary struggle.
“If you are to supper with the devil you must have a long spoon. We had a very long spoon indeed and we knew how to use it to feed ourselves.”
The veteran leader said the coalition arrangement had given Zanu PF time to recover and regroup.
“It was a backward step we had taken in order for us to recover,” he said.”
“The moment has come indeed for us to assert ourselves once again and say we are out of this shell. We are growing out of this shell, global national whatever, and we want to become ourselves; pure, pure, pure revolutionaries!”
Labels: 2013 ELECTIONS (ZW), ZANU-PF
posted by MrK @ 10:49 PM
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