Harare, Friday. “I do not know how I have come
to live this long,” Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe said a month
ahead of his 90th birthday, which he celebrates on Friday.
Africa’s oldest leader, he has outlived most of his younger siblings and most of his political foes.
“It is all God’s will,” he said at the burial of
his younger sister Bridget who died aged 78. President Mugabe once
quipped he would rule his country until he turned 100.
After winning a new five-year term last year, after more than three decades in power, he is not far from reaching that goal.
The country’s new constitution could see the man
who first came into office as prime minister at age 56, serve as
president until he is 99.
After three turbulent decades at the helm of the
former British colony, the firebrand leader has gone from a darling of
the West to international pariah. He uses blistering rhetoric to blame
Zimbabwe’s downward spiral on Western sanctions. “If people say you are
dictator... you know they are saying this merely to tarnish and demean
your status, then you don’t pay much attention,” he said in a 2013
documentary. He has told his critics to “go hang” and has vowed to forge
ahead with his drive to empower blacks by forcing foreign-owned
companies to cede their majority shares to locals.
Even as he turns 90, as he enters his 34th year in
power, and his health is increasingly questioned, there is no hint of a
succession plan in his party.
“The 89 years don’t mean anything,” said the iron self-confident Mugabe shortly before last year’s election.
“They haven’t changed me, have they? They haven’t
withered me. They haven’t made me senile yet, no. I still have ideas,
ideas that need to be accepted by my people,” he added. (AFP)
Mr Mugabe swept to power in 1980 as an
independence hero in the fight against white minority rule, bringing
democracy to millions of black Zimbabweans, and was widely credited with
health and education reforms.
He was also lauded for forging reconciliation
between blacks and whites at independence -- having offered some key
ministerial posts to moderate white politicians.
More praise was showered upon him for allowing Ian
Smith, the white supremacist Rhodesian ruler who had jailed him for a
decade, to stay on in Zimbabwe serving as a lawmaker.
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