The Insider

Turkey said it was planning to host an African summit and it did not see any problem in inviting Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe because he had been invited to attend the European- Union-Africa summit in Portugal.

(51 VIEWS)

Former Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front politburo member Simba Makoni said he would have liked to stand as the ZANU-PF presidential candidate in the 2008 elections but nominations for presidential candidates to challenge Robert Mugabe were not permitted at the extraordinary congress in December.

(71 VIEWS)

General Solomon Mujuru, who had been piling up pressure on President Robert Mugabe to step down and even gave him an ultimatum two weeks before the 2008 elections, suddenly turned around after the elections and gave no hint at all that he had had differences with Mugabe.

(84 VIEWS)

Japan was in a quandary over whether to invite President Robert Mugabe to the Tokyo International Conference on African Development or not after the United States insisted that Mugabe should not be invited while Southern African countries said they would not attend the conference if Mugabe was not welcome.

(67 VIEWS)

Britain was so frustrated by South African President Thabo Mbeki’s failure to put pressure on Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to step down after losing the 2008 elections that Prime Minister Gordon Brown arranged a 30-minute meeting with African National Congress president Jacob Zuma to discuss Zimbabwe though British officials were worried about corruption allegations against Zuma and what they termed other “political baggage”.

(80 VIEWS)

Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai left Harare for Gaborone in April before the announcement of the results of the 2008 presidential elections fearing that he might be arrested as part of a military coup against President Robert Mugabe.

(70 VIEWS)

Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai said he had won the 2008 presidential elections and condemned any re-engineering of the results saying President Robert Mugabe would not get away with it this time.

(39 VIEWS)

The leader of the Movement for Democratic Change Morgan Tsvangirai told a press conference on 1 April 2008, three days after the polls , that he had received enough votes to avoid a runoff but avoided stating that he had won the elections.

(102 VIEWS)

President Robert Mugabe backed off from announcing himself winner of the 2008 elections because of the large support for Movement for Democratic Change candidate Morgan Tsvangirai and pressure from the military and his own party.

(82 VIEWS)