Mugabe pays tribute to army

2003-08-12 15:29

Harare - President Robert Mugabe on Tuesday hailed Zimbabwe's military for successfully crushing anti-government protests organised by the opposition early this year, saying the army had helped secure stability.

Mugabe said the defence forces "maintained a high state of alert at all times and were able to secure our peace and stability" when "there were occurences of violence and clearly myopic demonstrations which sought...the overthrow of a democratically elected government".

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) - which blames the government for severe hardships gripping the country, including high unemployment, runaway 360% inflation, shortages of fuel, food, money and medicines - this year organised mass anti-government strikes and marches.

But the marches never got off the ground, as security forces turned out in force, and feared pro-government youth groups roamed the streets of the southern African country.

Hundreds of opposition supporters, activists and officials, including MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, were arrested in June

"Notwithstanding the avalance of negative outpourings about Zimbabwe and the repeated efforts to disturb our peace, our state security organs have always risen to the occasion and continued to guarantee the existance of a peace environment in the country," Mugabe said in a nationally broadcast speech to mark Defence Forces Day on Tuesday.

"We mark this day with pride," Mugabe said, announcing that his government would give priority to the modernisation of military equipment and re-training of the army to strengthen the army's reaction capacity to any external or internal aggression.

Zimbabwe has completed its withdrawal from the Democratic Republic of Congo where about 12 000 troops were deployed between August 1998 and last year to shore up government forces who faced an uprising from rebels.

- AFP