President inducted in divided Harare
ZIMBABWE yesterday inaugurated a president for the second time in nine months as a country recently jubilant over the fall of long-time leader Robert Mugabe is now largely subdued by renewed harassment of the opposition and a bitterly disputed election.
The military-backed President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who again took the oath of office, faces the mammoth task of rebuilding a worsening economy and uniting a nation deeply divided by a vote that many hoped would deliver change.
The 75-year-old Mnangagwa took power from his mentor Mugabe with the military’s help.
“It is time to move forward together,” said Mnangagwa, who has promised democratic and economic reforms after Mugabe’s repressive 37-year rule.
Opposition leader Nelson Chamisa on Saturday said: “They know they can’t invite me to a wedding where I was the one supposed to be receiving the gifts.”
His spokesperson Nkululeko Sibanda yesterday said “we haven’t received any formal invitation”.
The 40-year-old Chamisa has called for dialogue with Mnangagwa but suggested that talks on power-sharing first must acknowledge the opposition leader’s alleged victory. “You cannot steal my goats and then ask me to come and share them with you,” he said.
Ruling party spokesperson Paul Mangwana criticized Chamisa for saying he will snub the inauguration.
“It is important for nation-building at this critical time.
“The problem is the (Movement for Democratic Change party) did not give us a good opposition leader, they gave us a schoolboy, so he is playing schoolboy politics,” Mangwana said.
Upbeat supporters of the president and ruling ZANU-PF party filled the 60 000-seat National Sports Stadium in the capital, Harare. Some said they woke before dawn to catch buses and trucks in villages hundreds of kilometers away.
The heads of state of South Africa, Congo, Rwanda and Zambia and elsewhere attended.