Zimbabwe’s people and the ruling ZANU-PF party see no viable alternative candidate to President Robert Mugabe for general elections in 2018, state media quoted him as saying yesterday.
“The call to step down must come from my party, my party at congress, my party at central committee,” Mugabe said in excerpts from a radio broadcast that will air this week and that were printed in the state-owned Sunday Mail newspaper. “But then what do you see? It’s the opposite. They want me to stand for elections.”
“They want me to stand for elections, they want me to stand for elections everywhere in the party ... the majority of the people feel that there is no replacement, successor who to them is acceptable, as acceptable as I am,” he said in comments ahead of his 93rd birthday this coming week.
“The people, you know, would want to judge everyone else on the basis of President Mugabe as the criteria,” Mugabe, who is Africa’s oldest leader, said.
Mugabe has been in power in the southern African country since 1980 and in December his party confirmed him as its candidate for the next presidential election expected in mid-2018, when he will be 94.
Mugabe has repeatedly denied reports of health problems, fuelled in part by frequent trips to Dubai and Singapore.
He once quipped that he would rule until he turned 100.
“Of course if I feel that I can’t do it any more, I will say so to my party so that they relieve me. But for now I think I can’t say so,” Mugabe said.
But Mugabe, long known for his fiery speeches, has appeared unusually subdued in recent public appearances, speaking slowly and keeping his addresses short.
In September, he read a speech to parliament, apparently unaware that he had delivered the same address a month earlier.
Mugabe, known for his combative style, said he agreed with US President Donald Trump’s “America for America” approach.
“When it comes to Donald Trump, on the one hand talking of American nationalism, well America for America, America for Americans – on that we agree. Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans,” he said.
“But he is a radical. I don’t know whether the construction of the wall between America and Mexico is feasible, a feasible proposal. It appears quite nasty,” he added.
The Sunday Mail newspaper said Mugabe added that Trump might review the sanctions imposed on him and members of his inner circle by Washington in 2003 over alleged rights violations.
The sanctions were extended by the Obama administration.
No reason was given as to why Mugabe felt Trump might re-examine sanctions and his direct comments on the matter were not published.
But Mugabe said he had not wanted Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 White House election because “I knew she could slap sanctions on us as a legacy”.
“We are just now under sanctions imposed not by Donald Trump, but by Obama. What arrogance is that?” Mugabe was quoted as saying.
The comments were published in advance of the full broadcast of the interview on state-run TV today and tomorrow.
Critics accuse Mugabe of wrecking one of Africa’s most promising economies through policies such as violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms and money printing.
He and his party say the economy has been undermined by Western powers.
Inflation is rampant, and in recent months the country has experienced cash shortages, with the government struggling to pay civil servants.
In December, however, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party endorsed him once again as its candidate for 2018 elections, but rival factions in the party are already jostling to succeed him.
He surprised many in the party in 2014 by naming his wife, Grace, head of its influential women’s wing, spurring rumours that she could be nursing her own presidential ambitions.
And last week, Grace Mugabe, 51, appeared to dash any opponent’s hopes for succeeding him, saying voters would continue to back Mugabe even when he is dead.
“One day when God decides that Mugabe dies, we will have his corpse appear as a candidate on the ballot paper,” she said. “You will see people voting for Mugabe as a corpse.”