Welshman Ncube scoffs at Mugabe ‘insult’

Politics
Welshman Ncube has scoffed at President Robert Mugabe’s claims that he does not deserve to be in Cabinet because he lost the last election,

MDC leader Welshman Ncube has scoffed at President Robert Mugabe’s claims that he does not deserve to be in Cabinet because he lost the last election, saying it was “mind-boggling” for the 89-year-old to say he won an election himself.

Report by Staff Reporter

Mugabe told State media during the Africa Summit in Japan last week that there will be no place for losers in his next Cabinet even if there was a coalition government.

“We were able to set up a Global Political Agreement (GPA) with some who had won elections and others who had lost,” the veteran ruler said. “Both professors for example, Welshman Ncube and Arthur Mutambara had lost.

“They had been beaten, but they came in as honourable ministers who had been dishonoured by the people. It won’t happen again.”

But Ncube described Mugabe’s outburst as “sad delusions by a man whose hands drip with the blood of Zimbabweans murdered by his henchmen in an attempt to reverse his defeat at the March 2008 elections”.

“How someone who did what Mugabe did can possibly think he was elected is mind-boggling,” the MDC leader wrote on his Facebook page.

“We won the 16 parliamentary seats. We won the hundreds of council seats without shedding the blood of a single Zimbabwean nor for that matter injuring or assaulting a single Zimbabwean.

“Those who murdered and maimed hundreds of our people have no moral authority to lecture us on the essence of democracy.”

Mugabe lost the first round of the 2008 presidential elections to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

However, Tsvangirai was forced to boycott the runoff election after several MDC-T supporters were killed by suspected Zanu PF militants.

Tsvangirai had also been prevented from campaigning by police in Matabeleland North who impounded his bullet proof vehicle. Ncube said his party would not be bullied into a rushed election in violation of the country’s new Constitution.

“We dismiss the insult with the contempt it deserves,” he said.

“No amount of insults and abuse, no matter how angrily it is thrown at us, will make us yield an inch in our demands for a free and fair election.”

Mugabe has been accused of trying to rush elections to avoid implementing reforms he agreed to in the GPA.