ZIMBABWE: University threatened by spurned party

President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party has threatened the country's Methodist-run Africa University for declining to offer accommodation to party members during a conference later this month expected to endorse the ageing leader as its candidate in the next presidential polls.

Zimbabwe's Newsday newspaper broke the story on the institution's refusal, with senior party member from the area, Enoch Porusingazi, saying the university had initially agreed to accommodate the party only to backtrack.

Porusingazi said Western countries, which have slapped Mugabe and his inner circle with targeted sanctions, had a hand in the university's refusal to accommodate Mugabe's party members, expected to number about 10,000 at a conference later this month.

"As Zanu PF, we are so upset about these actions, since Africa University has chosen to act as if it is not in Zimbabwe, on Zimbabwean soil. As a party, we are very much disturbed," Porusingazi told the newspaper.

In an interview recently, Porusingazi said Zanu-PF was now monitoring university authorities as their behaviour had shown they were against the autocratic leader - a dire 'crime' in Zimbabwe, where previously opponents to Mugabe's rule have been killed.

In 2008, then Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out of a presidential run-off against Mugabe after nearly 500 MDC supporters and members were killed in the run-up to that election.

Following talks facilitated by South Africa, Tsvangirai was appointed the country's prime minister with Mugabe as president. But a new poll has been proposed for next year, with Mugabe (86) saying he would once again seek re-election, more than 30 years after coming to power after independence from Britain in 1980.

Africa University first came onto the radar of Mugabe's party after former US ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell, gave a lecture at the university, in which he accused Mugabe of pursuing 'voodoo' economics, which had destroyed the country.

The incident triggered a diplomatic spat that saw the government reading the riot act to the ambassador and the US recalling him for consultations.

In a classified message released by WikiLeaks recently, Dell said Mugabe thought his 18 doctorates give him the authority to "suspend the laws of economics".

"Robert Mugabe has survived for so long because he is cleverer and more ruthless than any other politician in Zimbabwe. To give the devil his due, he is a brilliant tactician and has long thrived on his ability to abruptly change the rules of the game, radicalise the political dynamic and force everyone else to react to his agenda," Dell wrote.

"However, he is fundamentally hampered by several factors: his ego and belief in his own infallibility; his obsessive focus on the past as a justification for everything in the present and future; his deep ignorance on economic issues (coupled with the belief that his 18 doctorates give him the authority to suspend the laws of economics, including supply and demand); and his essentially short-term, tactical style."