Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe looked increasingly isolated on Thursday as his party gathered in the shadow of a Commonwealth ban and efforts to expel Harare from the International Monetary Fund. Far from the pomp and ceremony of the Commonwealth summit in Abuja, where Britain's Queen Elizabeth began a state visit yesterday, Mugabe's ZANU PF party begins its own conference today amid calls for quitting the 54-member body.
| "Yeah, dammit! We'll quit! That'll show 'em! We don't need them! We don't need anybody! " |
In a fresh blow to the embattled Mugabe, the IMF said yesterday it had begun steps to expel Zimbabwe from the fund, saying state policies had failed to actively address the economic woes of the country, in arrears to the IMF since 2001.
| "Well, it ain't much of an International Monetary Fund if they don't give us international money..." |
Mugabe was due for the official opening ceremony of the annual ZANU PF party conference tomorrow at Masvingo, at the heart of a drought-prone farming and mining area and known mainly for the ruins of Great Zimbabwe on the edge of town - the relics of an ancient trading civilisation. ZANU PF says the main agenda will focus on Zimbabwe's severe economic crisis, the government's controversial land reforms and on ways to strengthen its party structures for parliamentary polls due early in 2005. But the Commonwealth is bound to figure.
| No matter how hard they try to ignore it... |
Officials said ZANU PF was likely to give the go-ahead, if Mugabe wished, to quit the Commonwealth, which suspended him over allegations of vote rigging in his 2002 re-election. Mugabe accuses "white racists" within the 54-member group of mainly ex-British colonies of pursuing a vendetta against him for giving white-owned farmland to landless blacks.
| I think the reason they're pursuing the vendetta is because he's managed to take one of the wealthiest countries in Africa and turn it into a basket case through sheer force of personality and an absolutely epic talent for mismanagement and corruption. What do you think? |
"I think there is going to be a resolution that if the Commonwealth is going to be an organisation where there is no respect for national sovereignty, where a small group of white racists are going to be allowed to dictate their wishes on everybody, then Zimbabwe must not be part of that Commonwealth," said one senior official who declined to be named.
| There's the door. Don't let it hit you on the ass on the way out... |
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