Tsvangirai says Mugabe’s age is now a crisis itself

Full statement

Tuesday, 12 April 2016

President Morgan Tsvangirai’s remarks to the University of Zimbabwe students

A good afternoon to the student leaders and all students gathered here.

It is with great pleasure that I address you here today. I say great pleasure because the party I lead, the MDC, has a special relationship with the student movement. It is the student movement, the labour movement and the constitutional movement that founded the MDC in 1999. So when I come here, I know I am among friends, among the stakeholders of the party I lead.

Students have a special place in the heart of the party and that is why some former student leaders have over the years occupied high positions in the party. As a party, we value the youth, we value the student movement as a key stakeholder in the founding ethos and the envisioning of the new Zimbabwe that we week.

So I am happy to be here.

The national crisis

I want to start by saying the country is currently facing a huge crisis; a crisis of the economy; a crisis of expectation due to the many unfulfilled promises but most importantly, a crisis of leadership. The current leadership of government has chosen to ignore the multi-layered crisis facing the people; it is choosing instead to focus on the issue of the succession issue of our 92-year old President, whose age is a crisis unto itself!

Everything has been tucked at the backseat of government attention as everyone in the party in government looks at how to poise themselves to succeed Mugabe.

I will talk about the challenges facing students later, but those challenges cannot be divorced from the acute national crisis that we all face. Students are part of the general population of the country. They are Zimbabwean too and their challenges reflect the monumental crisis that we all face. There are no jobs, the economy has collapsed, and the government is mired in debt while policy inconsistency especially over the controversial issue of indigenization, has firmly shut the doors of any prospective investment into the country. Yes, the people must be empowered but we do not have to burn the whole house down!

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