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Former Mugabe loyalist seeks to lead Zimbabwe
Craig Timberg, The Washington Post
February 06, 2008

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/05/AR2008020501487.html?hpid=sec-world

JOHANNESBURG - A senior member of President Robert Mugabe's ruling party said Tuesday he will challenge Mugabe in the March elections, adding an unpredictable new element to the president's bid to keep power after nearly 28 years.

The announcement of an independent campaign by former finance minister Simba Makoni, 57, is the firmest sign yet that Mugabe's ruling party has split deeply as former loyalists maneuver to succeed him.

Makoni serves on the ruling body of Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, where he has become known as a moderate. A member of the country's dominant Shona ethnic group, he is a past executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community, a regional body that enjoys broad respect in Zimbabwe and its neighbors.

He told supporters in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, that he wanted to run as the candidate of the ruling party but was blocked by Mugabe. "Following very extensive and intensive consultations with party members and activists countrywide, and also with others outside the party, I have accepted the call, and hereby advise the people of Zimbabwe that I offer myself as candidate for the office of President of Zimbabwe in the forthcoming elections," Makoni said, according to a text of his remarks.

The development comes days after the leading opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, failed to reunify after months of talks aimed at healing a rift dating to 2005. Its two factions announced Sunday that they would field separate candidates for the nation's major offices, setting up a three-way race for president, with Mugabe and opposition leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara.

The addition of Makoni makes it a four-way contest featuring an unprecedented range of options for voters seeking to register discontent with Mugabe, who presided over Zimbabwe's emergence from white supremacist rule in 1980 and, more recently, its sharp economic decline. The government estimates the nation's inflation rate at more than 24,000 percent, the worst in the world by far.

In his statement, Makoni made clear his goal of exploiting widespread economic misery.

"Let me confirm that I share the agony and anguish of all citizens over the extreme hardships that we have all endured for nearly 10 years now. I also share the widely held view that hardships are a result of failure of national leadership, and that change at that level is a prerequisite for change at other levels of national endeavor," he said.

In a brief telephone interview, Makoni said he would announce more details, including a platform, within 10 days.

But he faces a daunting organizational task in seeking to challenge the political machinery of Mugabe with less than eight weeks remaining before the March 29 vote.

Mugabe lost a referendum in 2000 over proposed changes to the national constitution, but he has won four straight elections since then against the Movement for Democratic Change, which has extensive support in the nation's urban areas and also in southern Zimbabwe's Matabeleland. The opposition has said that all four elections were rigged, but they have failed to mount major protests or otherwise put consistent pressure on Mugabe's government.

The next several weeks could bring major political realignment, as Makoni looks for allies among disaffected members of Mugabe's ruling party and also within the fractured opposition, where faith in Tsvangirai's leadership has gradually dwindled.

Among the backers of Makoni's effort is ruling party stalwart Solomon Mujuru, former head of the Zimbabwean army and husband of Vice President Joyce Mujuru, according to Dumisani Muleya, news editor of the Zimbabwe Independent newspaper.

He called Makoni's announcement "a significant political move which might signal the beginning of the disintegration" of the ruling party "and a looming endgame for the regime of Robert Mugabe."

*Special correspondent Darlington Majonga in Harare contributed to this report.  

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