President takes oath to rule over divided country
HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe on Sunday inaugurated a president for the second time in nine months as the country once jubilant over the fall of longtime 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 divided by a vote that many hoped would deliver change.
The 75-year-old, who took power from his mentor Mugabe with the military’s help in November, said “my arms are outstretched” to main opposition leader Nelson Chamisa after the Constitutional Court on Friday rejected opposition claims of vote-rigging and upheld the president’s narrow July 30 victory.
Some supporters of the president, however, carried a makeshift coffin bearing Chamisa’s name during Sunday’s ceremony.
“In just nine months we’ve birthed a new Zimbabwe,” said Mnangagwa, who has promised democratic and economic reforms after Mugabe’s repressive 37-year rule. He opened his speech by reading a letter from the 94-year-old Mugabe, whose firing of Mnangagwa sparked November’s dramatic events, offering congratulations.
Chamisa on Saturday said he respectfully rejects the court ruling and called the inauguration “false.” “They know they can’t invite me to a wedding where I was the one supposed to be receiving the gifts,” he said.
Upbeat supporters of the president and ruling ZANU-PF party filled the 60,000-seat National Sports Stadium in the capital, Harare, some riding buses and trucks from villages hundreds of miles away. The heads of state of South Africa, Congo, Rwanda and Zambia and elsewhere attended.
The mood was less enthusiastic in downtown Harare, an opposition stronghold. “He is not my president, why should I go?” asked one resident, Emmanuel Mazunda.
The government badly needed a credible election to end its status as a global pariah, have international sanctions lifted — Mnangagwa himself remains under U.S. sanctions — and open the door to investment.
Analysts say the president’s immediate tasks in his five-year term should include solving severe cash shortages and high unemployment that has forced thousands of people into the streets as vendors. Millions of others have fled the country over the years.
Mnangagwa in his speech said his government would work to transform the economy into a middle-income one by 2030 by modernizing infrastructure, fighting corruption and putting “jobs, jobs and more jobs” at the heart of his policies.