We’re ever ready for polls, says President
ZANU-PF infighting won’t stop the revolutionary party from posting a resounding victory, President Mugabe has predicted.
In any case, the President and ZANU-PF First Secretary said, all differences were being ironed out through the relevant party structures.
He made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview with ZBC-TV to mark his 93rd birthday yesterday.
Born on February 21, 1924, President Mugabe will have his official celebrations in Matopos on Saturday.
Asked on his party’s readiness for the 2018 polls, President Mugabe responded, “ZANU-PF is ever ready. You know that battery, which is written Everready, always yielding power. We stand ready all the time, but the issue is that of ensuring unity within us.
“The quarrels within the party, suspicions within the party, we are remedying those ones. So, it will not take us time to be in full gear. We do not have differences that can really mar our participation in the election. We have been at this game for a long time and we are not vana Zim (People) First. It’s born in the morning and before sunset, it has become something else.”
He scoffed at accusations by opposition parties that ZANU-PF was infiltrating them and causing their disintegration.
President Mugabe said parties without policies, ideologies and principles were bound to collapse.
“Well, where are we infiltrating them?” he asked.
“Have they given us the persons? Infiltration is an act of getting your people clandestinely into their organisations. Infiltrate MDC-T, kuti tidii? We haven’t done such a thing. It’s failures on their part and quarrels, of course, within them.”
President Mugabe added, “They are not as well organised as ourselves, our party, no defi- nite principles guiding them. Look at the Press. Day in, day out, just attacks on us, ZANU-PF, something about Mugabe, something about the First Lady, to sell their organs. But what do they talk about? Our industries, by way of policies that they envisage, mining industry, agriculture, the utilities, infrastructure? What are the policies that they have in these areas of the sectors of our economy? Hapana!”
Zimbabwe People First interim leader Dr Joice Mujuru last week, fired Messrs Didymus Mutasa, Rugare Gumbo, Kudakwashe Bhasikiti, Munacho Mutezo, Claudious Makova, Lucky Kandemiri and Dr Margaret Dongo, accusing them of being ZANU-PF infiltrators out to destabilise her fledgling party.
The group, in counter-expelling Dr Mujuru, called her an unintelligent and unprofessional person.
ZANU-PF organs have rubbished claims of infiltrating ZimPF, saying it was a weak party formed from a weak foundation and cannot survive Zimbabwean politics.