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Stop insulting one another, says Zim presidential candidate
Monsters and Critics
February 28, 2008

View story on the Monsters and Critics website

Harare A little-known independent candidate for the Zimbabwe presidential elections said Thursday that Zimbabweans should stop 'hurling insults' at each other.

Zimbabwe's three main candidates for the March 29 poll are longtime incumbent President Robert Mugabe, main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and ex-finance minister Simba Makoni.

But a fourth candidate, independent Langton Towungana, who few had ever heard of before nomination courts sat earlier this month, has emerged in favourable reports in the state media which are traditionally hostile to opposition candidates.

Towungana, who is from the western tourist resort of Victoria Falls and who has already been interviewed on prime-time TV, said in an interview Thursday with the state-controlled Herald that Zimbabwe had to engage the international community if it wanted to turn around the economy.

Zimbabwe's economy is in its worst crisis since independence in 1980, with annual inflation at more than 100,000 per cent and critical shortages of essential drugs, some foods and foreign currency.

'We are one nation. We are Zimbabweans. Let's understand each other because we cannot develop the nation by hurling insults at each other,' Towungana said.

The Herald which is the only daily left in Zimbabwe since armed police shut down the popular Daily News in 2003 carried a much shorter report on a tour of high-density suburbs by Tsvangirai.

The paper said the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader had commiserated with Harare residents for the suffering they were going through.

But, the Herald added, the sufferings were 'ironically caused by the MDC which urged the West to impose economic sanctions against Zimbabwe.'

Britain, the US and the EU have imposed targeted sanctions on more than 100 top ruling party officials. In the extremely unlikely event Towungana wins the polls, he told the Herald he would ask established MPs from other political parties to form a government, as long as they were not 'criminal.'

'I am flexible to work with anyone as long as you are not a criminal. We need to go back to the fundamentals if we are serious about turning around the fortunes of the economy,' he said.

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