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Zanu-PF calls special congress
08/09/2007 14:01 - (SA)
Harare - Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's ruling party announced on Saturday it will hold an extraordinary congress this year in a move analysts say is meant to whip dissenting factions into line ahead of key elections next year.
Mugabe is due to stand as his party's candidate in presidential elections expected to be held jointly with parliamentary elections in March next year. Mugabe, who has ruled without a break since 1980, will be seeking re-election at the age of 84.
But political commentator Bill Saidi said Zanu-PF was in a state of disarray, with some of the party's political provinces against having Mugabe stand as the party's candidate.
He said he expected Mugabe to call for unity and make a few threats at the congress due in early December.
"From what we have heard, there's a movement in some provinces to not have Mugabe as a candidate. This congress is to sort it out and formally announce Mugabe as the candidate," Saidi, who is the deputy editor of the private Standard newspaper, told Deutsche Presse Agentur dpa.
"Maybe Mugabe is going to read them the riot act," he said.
The ruling party is divided into at least two rival factions jostling to succeed Mugabe - one aligned to former parliamentary speaker Emmerson Mnangagwa, and the other behind former army commander Solomon Mujuru, whose wife Joyce is one of the country's two vice presidents.
Traditionally, Zanu-PF holds a congress every five years. The next congress was only due in 2009, with only a much smaller national conference billed for later this year.
Writing cryptically in his weekly newspaper column under his pen name Nathaniel Manheru, Mugabe's spokesperson George Charamba suggested news of the extraordinary congress could prompt speculation of an imminent unity pact with the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party. But he quickly dismissed the idea.
"It (MDC) has to be defeated. Extirpated from the body politic," he wrote. "The Extraordinary Congress will be about Zanu-PF!"
This year's meeting had been scheduled to take place in the northern mining town of Bindura, but has now been moved to the capital to accommodate hundreds of delegates drawn from more than 50 districts across the country, state media reported.
Mugabe's party is set to pass into law a constitutional amendment bill that will allow presidential and parliamentary elections to be held jointly in March.
The amendment will also allow the Zanu-PF dominated parliament to choose a successor to Mugabe should he die in office or stand down mid-term.
Discussions around the harmonised 2008 elections are due to take centre stage at this years Zanu-PF congress, said a report on state radio.
- Sapa-dpa
- SAPA
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