| President Robert Mugabe has marked 24 years of freedom from British colonial rule by saying his country will never re-join the "evil" Commonwealth. Mugabe, who has steered the southern African country since independence in 1980, again ruled out any possibility of returning to the grouping of mainly former colonies of Britain. Zimbabwe was suspended from the organisation after Mugabe's controversial re-election in 2002 when it concluded that the polls were marred by high levels of violence and intimidation. When the Commonwealth last December extended that suspenion, an angry Mugabe said he would pull his country out for good. "We shall never go back to this evil organisation," the president told tens of thousands of people gathered today for celebrations at a giant sports stadium in the capital Harare. |