Posted on 02/23/2008 3:38:20 PM PST by NormsRevenge
BEITBRIDGE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) - President Robert Mugabe dismissed his two challengers in next month's Zimbabwean elections as a lightweight and a Western puppet on Saturday.
In a rally to mark his 84th birthday and launch his campaign for another five-year term, Mugabe said his ruling ZANU-PF party would win the March 29 votes resoundingly.
Former Finance Minister Simba Makoni, who says he has the support of a number of ZANU-PF officials, is standing against Mugabe in the presidential contest.
"He is like a frog trying to inflate itself up to the size of an ox. It will burst," Mugabe told thousands of party activists in a dusty sports field in Beitbridge on the South African border.
Mugabe also lashed out at Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the largest faction of Zimbabwe's main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), describing him as a "puppet" of former colonial power Britain and the United States.
Mugabe's government has accused the two Western nations and their allies of using sanctions to undermine and sabotage Zimbabwe's economy, which is in crisis with inflation of more than 100,000 percent, unemployment at more than 80 percent, and chronic food and fuel shortages.
"It is the sanctions that they have imposed which have caused a great deal of harm on the economy," Mugabe said. He expected he and his party would win "resoundingly" in the presidential, parliamentary and municipal elections.
DIVIDED OPPOSITION
Tsvangirai, a former union leader who has come closest to ousting Mugabe in previous elections, told thousands of supporters at a rally that Zimbabweans were ready to end the Mugabe era and hand the MDC power.
"We remain the legitimate voice of democratic change in this country," Tsvangirai said in a stadium in Mutare, some 265 km (165 miles) east of the capital Harare.
"All of Zimbabwe is in the custody of a dictatorship. We're all bleeding, but we're marching on. We're weak with hunger, but we're stronger with anger."
The MDC has been weakened in the past year by a government crackdown on anti-Mugabe activists, divisions within its ranks and Makoni's emergence.
Tsvangirai and Makoni could divide the anti-Mugabe vote and hand victory to the veteran leader, who has been in power since independence from Britain in 1980.
The MDC leader, who accuses Mugabe of rigging past elections, has refused to run a joint campaign with Makoni and a splinter MDC group has thrown its weight behind the former finance minister.
Both opposition candidates are campaigning on a platform of ending Zimbabwe's economic crisis which they and Western nations blame on government mismanagement and policies such as the seizure of thousands of white-owned farms.
Tsvangirai raised the prospect that a new government could win help from the international community to rebuild Zimbabwe's economy.
"Robert Mugabe is one of the greatest tyrants of the 21st century, when we bring him down, they will be there to help us, I can assure you of this," he said.
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe addresses the crowd at a huge rally in Beitbrigde, February 23, 2008. Mugabe celebrates his 84th birthday at a huge rally on Saturday where he is expected to formally launch his re-election campaign. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo
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It’s not easy being green.
Yeah, Mugabe deserves another term all right.
Too bad that, within the entire populating of Zimbabwe, one true bullet couldn't be found.
My God, isn’t Robert Mugabe 83 years old? I do know he has raped his country to the toon of what 10,000 percent inflation per month? I do know he got rid of white farmers and their properties and turned them over to his coherts. May they (the government) all starve and then go to Hell
Frogs and puppets are offended. The process servers will be contacting Mugabe shortly.
How about, maybe, just for once, realizing how much you’ve screwed up the entire nation and created a leech class that works even harder to suck up what little hard currency is left in your nation. Have they issued the 50,000,000ZD note yet, for small change transactions?
BUMP
Saturday 23rd February 2008
Dear Family and Friends,
Headline news on the propaganda mill one day this week was that three trillion Zimbabwe dollars had been raised for President Mugabe’s 84th birthday party. I thought about what you could do with that much money but before I could work it out I had to check in a dictionary just exactly how much a trillion was.
My sources say that a billion is a thousand million and a trillion is a million million. This means that for the President’s birthday celebration being held in Beitbridge, there is a pile of money which on paper is a 3 followed by 12 zeroes. Even in Zimbabwe’s collapsed state, 3 trillion dollars is a huge amount of money. It didn’t take long before my kitchen table was littered with bits of scrap paper covered with handwritten sums. Why didn’t I just use a calculator you might ask? That’s simple, there are too many digits and so this sum had to be done by hand.
The calculations took some time to perform and the results were shocking. For three trillion dollars I could buy three million kilograms of maize meal at the present Grain Marketing Board price of a million dollars a kg. This, of course, is assuming that the GMB had any maize meal for sale, which they say they haven’t. Allowing half a kg of maize meal per person, 6 million Zimbabweans, half the population of the country, could have had one decent meal with the President’s birthday party money. A friend who is far more mathematically minded than me, and had more patience with all those lines of zeroes, worked the figures out a different way. 85 trucks, each holding 35 tonnes of maize, could have been filled with the three trillion dollars of birthday party money.
Moving away from the dollars, I went in search of ingredients usually found at a birthday party. Three major supermarket chains which have outlets all over the country were visited. The cake came first on my list but there was no flour, sugar, margarine, baking powder, milk or eggs in any of the supermarkets.
Puddings and sweet treats were next on my list but there was no jelly, instant pudding, custard, biscuits or tarts to buy. Sandwiches, I thought, they are good for parties but there was no bread or rolls, no spread, cheese, cold meats or sandwich fillings to buy. What about a hot meal I thought but there was no maize meal, rice, pasta or potatoes and so that idea was also a non starter.
The shopping list and the search for ingredients was a pointless exercise but at least it was easier than trying to understand the latest official inflation figures. In January 2008 inflation was one hundred thousand, five hundred and eighty percent - it is the stuff of hellish nightmares and the reason why we parents can’t sleep at night.
Trying to understand three trillion dollars was utterly absurd for an ordinary mum in a collapsed country. Hardest of all though was knowing that half the population of the country could have gone to bed tonight on a full stomach if the birthday party had been sacrificed for the suffering, hungry people of a country whose 84 year old ruler has been in power for almost 28 years.
Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy.
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