Zanu-PF asks Mugabe to stay

Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF party has asked President Robert Mugabe to stay on as party leader, the state-funded ‘The Herald’ said on Friday. The newspaper said that delegates at the party’s congress agreed that Mugabe should retain his post “until the land issue had been resolved”. Mugabe was expected to face a leadership challenge from the floor. However analysts were quoted by Reuters as saying that Mugabe had avoided a confrontation by “purging” provincial party executives of potential rivals in months leading up to the congress.

In his address to the congress Mugabe told black Zimbabwean to “unite” against a “white racist minority” whom he blamed for the country’s economic problems. He also vowed to go-ahead with the government’s land reform programme. Mugabe was expected to appoint a new politburo, the decision making arm of Zanu-PF, on Friday. Mugabe gave no indication as to whether or not he would run in the next presidential election in 2002.