Mugabe looks forward to retirement in three years

Endy M. Bayuni and Veeramalla Anjaiah, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Robert Gabriel Mugabe is 81 years old and has ruled Zimbabwe since its independence in 1980. In Jakarta for the Asian-African Summit this weekend, Mugabe showed no signs whatsoever that age was catching up with him.

The former guerrilla leader, who served 10 years in jail for rebelling against the white regime in Rhodesia (now named Zimbabwe), was talking to guests and moving around swiftly from room to room in the small Zimbabwe Embassy building, in the Patra Kuningan district, which he had just inaugurated on Thursday.

Having flown into Jakarta the day before, he had had a busy schedule ahead of him, with a number of bilateral meetings with other leaders, and there was the summit itself on Friday and Saturday, and the planned walk down memory lane in Bandung, the site of the historic first Asia-Africa Conference in 1955, on Sunday.

Mugabe, accompanied on his trip by his 40-year-old wife Amai Grace, displayed none of the frailties one would normally find in most men of his age. During our meeting, he sat down on the settee and stood up without assistance.

We asked him if it would be premature to talk about succession, given his obvious fitness, and the fact that his party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU- PF), had just won a parliamentary election that gave him the necessary two-thirds majority to change Zimbabwe's constitution.

Mugabe laughs.

"It's not a question of fit or not. It's a question of what the people want.

"At the end of the term, I have a desire to retire, even though I am fit. I must write my memoirs. I still have to do three years before the end of the term, and we will look at the situation then. But it will be my intention to retire then."

Mugabe is one of the oldest and the longest serving heads of state at the Jakarta summit, and in the world for that matter.

A controversial figure much vilified in the West, particularly by Britain, he continues to enjoy enough support from his people to allow him to continue his rule. Last month's parliamentary election, as with the presidential election in 2002, was in essence an endorsement of his leadership by his people.

Both elections were closely contested, with ZANU-PF winning just enough of a majority. But the 150-seat parliament includes 30 appointees, a fact that virtually secures his control over the institution. The main opposition party claims that both elections were rigged.

If Mugabe is ready to retire, is he then grooming a successor?

"No. I have in mind the right of the people to choose my successor.

"We will offer the party and leaders of my party. In the meantime, one hopes that one or two figures will have come up, and will make the great leap and the people will be able to choose who shall succeed."

But one thing he is sure about is that his successor will come from his ZANU-PF party.

"We sell our policies to the people, we are the party that defeated colonialism; that rescued the whole population; that gave freedom and independence. The party that also worked to satisfy the people. We are really the people's leaders. We are one and the same with the people."

He defied his critics, particularly in the West, who accuse him of violating human rights and being undemocratic.

"I want my people to be absolutely free in every sense of the word, and be masters of their own destiny, owners of their own resources," he said.

He repeatedly spoke ill of Tony Blair, making clear that to him, the British prime minister is personally to blame for some of the problems Zimbabwe and its people face.

"This is the issue of land mainly," he said, stressing that the problem started when Blair reneged on Britain's 1979 promise to compensate for farmland taken by the government from members of the white minority, which he said was part of the peaceful settlement that led to Zimbabwe's independence.

"If Blair did not do that, then we would have no obligations ourselves to compensate the farmers. We cannot buy back land which was never bought from us ... Blair said no, we said fine. Keep your money, but we keep our land."

How does he envisage a Zimbabwe without Mugabe, or a post- Mugabe Zimbabwe?

"Zimbabwe will always have a Mugabe, either now or in history," he said.