Mugabe term extension madness: Tekere

National Report
http://www.fingaz.co.zw/story.aspx?stid=2163   
       
Kumbirai Mafunda Senior Reporter

FIREBRAND ZANU PF founder member and veteran nationalist Edgar Tekere has described as “madness” ZANU PF’s decision to extend President Robert Mugabe’s term to 2010.

Tekere, nicknamed “Twoboy,” said ZANU PF’s resolution at its conference in Goromonzi last weekend to combine the 2008 presidential and the 2010 parliamentary elections was a clear indication of President Mugabe’s insatiable appetite for power.
“Ndokupenga ikoko. Matricks okuda kufira pachigaro. (That’s madness. It’s a trick to stay in power for life.) He has already overstayed and the party and the country has suffered,” said Tekere in a telephone interview from his Mutare home.
Tekere was readmitted into ZANU PF at last weekend’s conference, but was barred from occupying any position in the party for five years.
Tekere, who became the first person within the ZANU PF leadership to publicly oppose President Mugabe’s one party state plan in the late 1980s, said he felt let down by his liberation war colleague. He claims to have struggled in his bid to woo President Mugabe into ZANU PF in the formative years of the party.
In an outburst likely to be seen as a case of sour grapes after being banned from elective office in ZANU PF for the next five years, Tekere said: “I sweated to form that party (ZANU PF) and to persuade him (Mugabe) to join it (ZANU PF) from Nkomo (Joshua).”
The former ZANU PF big-shot also scoffed at claims that the ZANU PF presidency had set strict conditions for him to meet before he could assume any office in the party.
“That party is more of my party than it is for Mugabe. Vamwe vacho ndiwana mafikizolo handimbozivi kuti vakabva nokupi (some of these people are Johnny-come-latelys, I don’t know where they came from),” Tekere said.
Pressed to explain his quest to rejoin ZANU PF considering that the party has not made any reforms since he quit it in 1988 to form his own party, the former Mutare Urban legislator said he will bare his soul on January 11 at the Harare launch of his memoirs, which he has titled A Lifetime of Struggle.
“I would prefer you talk to me on the 11th of January. But you can predict what I am going to say,” Tekere said.
But the political maverick’s dig at President Mugabe will baffle the ruling party’s senior leadership, especially supporters in Manicaland who laboured to back Tekere’s desperate bid to be re-admitted into the ruling party.
Tekere was sacked from ZANU PF in October 1988 because of his strong opposition to President Mugabe’s attempts to establish a one-party state. He formed the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM), which made an impressive attempt to dislodge ZANU PF during the 1990 general elections.