Welshman Ncube, the leader of the MDC, has said President Robert Mugabe will not press ahead with organising elections this year because he was not ready to face the consequences of such a move.
Ncube said if he did that, President Mugabe would find himself in a similar situation he was after the June 2008 presidential run-off poll when he humbled himself and negotiated a power-sharing deal with his sworn political nemesis, Morgan Tsvangirai.
Ncube said anyone who believed the country would go to the polls this year had to be a “hyper idiot” because the situation on the ground did not allow for elections to be held any time soon.
“We will not have elections because the world will not allow it,” Ncube told journalists at the Quill Club in Harare on Monday night.
“The people of Zimbabwe will not allow that. (Besides) they (President Mugabe and Zanu PF) know that if they force an election there will be back where they were in 2008 where they had to go into negotiations.”
“There is consensus in Sadc that whenever that election is held it should end the Zimbabwe crisis and it should remove Zimbabwe from the agenda of Sadc.”
Ncube said the constitution-making process would realistically take up to 2012 to be complete and therefore there was no way elections could be held before its conclusion.
He said there was also the issue of coming up with a new voters’ roll, a process which required time. Ncube said Zimbabwe’s political problems were being caused by Zanu PF which did not believe in multi-party democracy.
- Chamisa under fire over US$120K donation
- Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals
- Pension funds bet on Cabora Bassa oilfields
- Councils defy govt fire tender directive
Keep Reading
“We do not have the framework for multi-party democracy,” he said. “What happened in Parliament (on Saturday when a Zanu PF mob stormed into the chamber and beat up MPs) will not happen where there is a foundation for multi-party democracy. Zanu PF does not believe in multi-party democracy. They go to an election that will produce one result – a Zanu PF victory. They say if we lose we go to war.”
Ncube said the problem was worsened by the mentality of the Zanu PF “armed wing” which believed the liberation war party should rule forever.
He said the military and other security agents were “behaving like an armed wing of Zanu PF”. Such a mentality, he said, was carried over from the war of liberation waged in the 1970s.
Ncube said Zanu PF had now created new militias in “young war veterans” who he alleged had been trained to behave in the same manner as former liberation war combatants.
“Young war veterans in their 20s have been trained to believe in the same thing. That is why a 20-year-old policeman speaks like (Constantine) Chiwenga or (Augustine) Chihuri,” Ncube said.
Chiwenga, the army commander, and Chihuri, the police chief, have both sworn that they will not salute any leader with no liberation war credentials.
Ncube accused civic society groups whose leaders were clinging to office, saying it was evidence that “the Zanu PF DNA we have it among ourselves. Even if we oppose Zanu PF, we mimic them every day”.
