20100916
allafrica

ZANU PF will never handover power to MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, even if he wins next year's elections, Presidential Affairs Minister Didymus Mutasa said on Wednesday.

'Who is Tsvangirai? He will never rule this country. Never ever. How can we let the country be ruled by sell-outs. He will only do so over our dead bodies. If we go to the polls and he defeats Mugabe, ZANU PF and the people of Zimbabwe will not allow that,' Mutasa has been quoted as saying.

The ZANU PF politburo member and MP said this at Bota business centre in Zaka, Masvingo province, where he was officiating at an agricultural field day organized by the South East Growers Association.

Over the years Mugabe and his cronies have frequently labelled Tsvangirai a 'puppet' used by one-time colonial power Britain to try to bring down the regime. But the former trade union leader insists he is his own man with much popular support.

Commenting on Mutasa's latest outburst MDC-T spokesman Nelson Chamisa said the statement was treasonable to even suggest the people's will could just be discarded like that.

'But to us his statements are nothing new considering that he (Mutasa) is a perennial day dreamer who believes in things that are incredible. He's the same person who is perennially living in the past; in cloud cuckoo land, a person who thinks that diesel will come out of some rock,' Chamisa said.

This was in reference to spirit medium Nomatter Tagarira, who in 2007 claimed that she could conjure refined diesel out of a rock by striking it with her staff, leading ministers in ZANU PF, including Mutasa, to believe they had found a solution to Zimbabwe's fuel shortage.

Eventually her story was exposed as a hoax, but not before the regime gave her Z$5 billion, a car and a farm, in return to exclusive rights to the diesel fuel from Maningwa Hills near Chinhoyi, some 100 km northwest of Harare.

The MDC spokesman said Zimbabwe does not belong to ZANU PF, adding that such talk betrayed the thinking of the party who believe they were born to be in power forever.

'It shows you how confused Mutasa is. Zimbabwe is bigger than ZANU PF and how can he say the people of Zimbabwe will resist to be ruled by a person they vote into power. That is total madness,' Chamisa added.

Tsvangirai meanwhile said on Thursday that negotiations are currently underway to offer assurances about the future to members of the security sector, which had all along refused to engage with the MDC.

Addressing an economic summit on Zimbabwe in South Africa, Tsvangirai said government had engaged the military junta with a view to reaching a win-win position for the future.

'There is skepticism on the role of the security forces in undermining the will of the people. We respect our security forces and we hope that in line with the GPA, they will respect the rule of law, the GPA itself and the Constitution of Zimbabwe. Discussions are taking place to build confidence across the barriers of yester-year,' The Prime Minister said.