The king of Swaziland, one of the world’s few absolute monarchs, announced on Thursday that his country had changed its name to “Kingdom of eSwatini” to mark 50 years since independence from British rule.

Unlike some countries, Swaziland did not change its name when it gained independence in 1968 after being a British protectorate for more than 60 years.

King Mswati III declared the name change during independence day celebrations at a packed sports stadium in the second city of Manzini.

“African countries on getting independence reverted to their ancient names before they were colonised. So from now on the country will be officially be known as the Kingdom of eSwatini.”

The name Swaziland angers some citizens as it is a mix of Swazi and English.

 The move has been mooted for several years, with lawmakers considering the issue in 2015. Mswati III has used the new name in previous official speeches.

The king, who was crowned in 1986 aged 18, rules by decree and has often been criticised for his lavish lifestyle despite the grinding poverty suffered by many of his citizens.

Political parties are banned from taking part in elections and only candidates approved by chiefs loyal to the king can stand for office.

The country, which has a population of about 1.3 million people, suffers the highest HIV rate in the world, with 27 percent of adults infected.

The name change could mean that the country’s constitution is re-written, as well as changes for the Royal Swaziland Police Force, the Swaziland Defence Force and the University of Swaziland.

After independence, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, Nyasaland became Malawi, and Bechuanaland became Botswana.

(AFP)

Ian Khama took the international community by surprise when he announced early in the month that he was voluntarily stepping down as president of Botswana. The 65-year-old leader will be the second African president to step down in recent time after Angola’s former President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, 75. Kham’s announcement came not too long after Zimbabwe’s former President Robert Mugabe, 94 and South Africa’s former President Jacob Zuma were forced out of power in their respective countries. Khama’s decision immediately raised the hope that sit-tight and old generation African leaders have begun to learn that it is wise to quit when the ovation is loud. Curiously, the reported cases of voluntary and forced resignations of African presidents had occurred in swiftly only in one sub-region, Southern Africa, even as the other regions are also‘filth’ of sit-tight leaders.

Following Mugabe’s exit, watchers of Africa affairs quickly turned to Cameroon in West Africa where 84-year-old President Paul Biya has held sway over the country’s affairs for 35 years nonstop. Biya succeeded the country’s former leader, Ahmadou Ahidjo in 1982 and he has since remained in power. Ahidjo ruled Cameroon for 21 years and voluntarily handed power over to Biya due to his failing health. Interestingly, Biya had served in various capacities in Ahidjo’s government before becoming president.

It would seem Cameroon is a leading African state having a government of the elderly. While Biya is 85 year-old, the Senate president, Marcel Niat Njifenji is 83-year-old. He was born on 26 October 1934. Under the country’s constitution, Njifenji is the qualified candidate to succeed Biya. The Prime Minister Philémon Yang is 70-years-old. He was born on 14 June 1947.  Records show that the Biya’s administration is made up of octogenarians who have been in power for over 60 years now and there are no signs that they are ready to go. It is no wonder that Biya is nicknamed the “Monarch.”

Cameroon is expected to hold presidential election in October and the thinking among analysts is that Biya should throw in the towel and allow young generation of leader(s) to emerge. The main opposition party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF) may have tactfully thrown a challenge to the ruling party, the Cameroon’s People Democratic Movement (CPDM), when its founder and leader, 77-year-old Ni John Fru Ndi announced he was stepping down for a younger politician to contest the presidential election in October. The party has announced the nomination of a 49-year-old aviation expert, Joshua Osih as its presidential candidate. Ndi was quoted as saying he wants to leave the stage for the young generation.

But it might be an illusion to think that Biya is prepared to vacate the presidency. About five months to the election, he has remained silent on whether he was going to relinquish power though it is an open secret that the ailing president would be seeking another 7-year-mandate. Biya suffers prostate cancer and failing heart. In February, a Cameroon newspaper carried an unconfirmed report that the president slumped at his Unity Palace.  The report said: “The atmosphere at the presidential palace is tense and government officials have been holding meetings to come up with a common response so as to keep the population in check.” It is believed that the anxiety over the Ambazonia crisis and the poor state of the economy have further added to the deteriorating health of the president. Yet, he clings to power.

He is often out of the country seeking medical attention abroad, a development that has made some observers to nickname him “absentee president.”A non-governmental organisation, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) said in March that it has “calculated the amount of time the president spent abroad using reports from the daily newspapers.” According to the group, “the president spent nearly 60 days out of the country last year on private visits.” It also alleged that “he spent a third of the year abroad in 2006 and 2009,” adding that “The Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva is his favorite destination.”

The government-owned Cameroon Tribune newspaper immediately responded, calling the group’s investigation “a clear electoral propaganda.” Still, other sources said the president seldom appears in public and often meets with his ministers at the airport.

It was a shocking revelation when the media said Biya has not held cabinet meeting since 2015.  How can it be explained that Cameroon has a president who does not consider the holding of cabinet meetings important. The presidency might argue that the prime minister is in control and holds meetings with the ministers. But this cannot be considered as a plausible excuse in a modern day society.

It was only on March 15, 2018, he convened another cabinet meeting which had no agenda in the invitation letters sent out.  Sources reportedly said the meeting was not different from those of the past when Biya delivers more of lectures instead of allowing the cabinet members to deliberate on issues. The cabinet meetings are said to be usually brief, perhaps not to over stretch the president’s poor state of health.

Already, his loyalists who benefit from his government are reportedly calling on him to contest the election. And that is what the president needs to buttress his decision to continue in power. Of course, the president has a readymade argument on his table as to why he has to contest the election. That argument borders on the political crisis facing the country following the declaration of the Ambazonia state by the Southwest and Northwest Anglophone provinces. Currently, Biya is ruling a country on the edge and there are no indications that peace will return soon.

Believing that it can always clamp down on agitators, the government failed to take appropriate peaceful measures to stem the tide of political upheaval when signs first emerged that the indigenes of the two English-speaking provinces were feeling marginalised.

The situation got to a head when the government issued the obnoxious decree compelling schools and courts to adopt French as their official language whereas English language has been the official language in the two provinces. Biya has reportedly ruled the country by decrees since becoming president even as he claims to be running a democratic government.

The refusal of the Biya administration to respond naturedly to the peaceful protests initially staged by the people has since been the undoing of the government in the two provinces. As the country contends with increasing cases of kidnapping, assassinations, killing of government security agents and indeed outright guerrilla warfare, the government has resorted to the use of brute force to quell the uprising. But that seems to be a herculean task as the separatists continue to expand their base and the government continues to increase the number of troops being deployed.

The seriousness of the Anglophone crisis is to be found in the continuous flow of refugees from Cameroon to Nigeria. Three Nigeria states, Taraba, Cross Rive and Benue, sharing border with Cameroon are already overwhelmed with refugees escaping from the daily exchange of fire between government troops and separatist forces.

Only few days ago, eight Cameroonian athletes went missing from the ongoing Commonwealth Games in Australia to the shock of Yaounde. Cameroon press attaché at the games, while reacting to the development, admitted that “It came as a complete surprise,” adding that “There were no worries of this kind of thing might happen.”    Apparently, the athletes have fled the Cameroon as life is no longer safe there. Besides the breakdown of law and order in the troubled provinces in particular, the crisis is having its toll on the economy as well. The educational system in the two provinces has also collapsed.

Ironically, Biya calls Southern Cameroonians agitating for independence terrorists. He has vowed to destroy them. The government recently celebrated the deportation to Cameroon of the Ambazonia secessionist leader in Nigeria, Ayuk Tabe Julius and 46 others. Reports said Ayuk was among 15 separatist leaders who Cameroon issued arrest warrant for in November 2017.

The Anglophone crisis has continued despite the government’s decentralization policy which was introduced to douse political tension in the agitating provinces. The policy gives more power the local council to oversee the affairs of their areas. The poor implementation of the policy made indigenes of the provinces not to have faith in the process which the president had described as a major reform.

Biya said: “It is my belief that fast-tracking our decentralisation process will enhance the development of our regions.” On the implantation process, he said: “To that end, I have ordered the implementation of the necessary measures to speedily give effect to this major reform.”

But what went wrong with the process of implementation? The people believe it a political gimmick to give a resemblance of democratic governance where there is freedom of expression, unhindered electoral process and even distribution of infrastructures. But Biya thinks otherwise.

He said: “We started implementing this process effectively since 2010, but of course we can ascertain the fact that there are still some difficulties, there are still some problems. The councils complain that the resources put at their disposal do not allow them to respond to the needs of the populations and to the implementation of their projects.”

Certainly, Biya deserves commendation for his steadfast leadership. He is a patriotic Cameroonian who thinks well about his motherland. He stands strongly for the unity of the country. Indeed, he has great dreams for the country. But sometimes dreams become mere fantasies that are not realizable. Perhaps, this explains why he has not been able to turn Cameroon into another United States of America. At 80 plus, the president would be taking the country for a ride to think that he alone has the wisdom to lead the country. It is clear that he is already overwhelmed with the Ambazonia crisis and the dwindling economic fortunes facing the people. Now is the time for him to bow out and allow new blood to be injected into the government. The unity and progress of Cameroon is more important than a president who clings to power even when it is clear he no longer has solutions to the nation’s mounting problems. Biya should either learn from the experience of Mugabe and Zuma or take a cue from Khama.

Culled from Sunnewsonline

Liberia’s President George Weah has promised to deepen media freedom during a meeting with the country’s media practitioners on Friday.

The Weah administration, which has been in place for a little over three months, has not been spared by the Liberian media.In the face of accusations that he intends to gag the press, the former footballer rather guaranteed them complete freedom.

“I always use you as an example. When I supported human rights in this country, you were against me. But I always remembered you because at that time, what I was doing was to keep the country from being torn apart. And I’m glad you’re here today. Now, together we must create this environment, this awareness, so that Liberians can forgive themselves, and we can move forward “, said Weah.

In March, during a visit to Freetown ,Sierra Leone, the UN rapporteur on freedom of expression, David Kaye, called on the Weah administration to build on Liberia’s achievements in this area, insisting on “decriminalizing defamation” and “transforming the media industry .

AFP

Police in Togo have dispersed an opposition protest in the capital Lome. Reports indicate that teargas was fired to disperse protesters in Lome and in other towns across the country.

Reports indicate that the violent clampdown by the police led to injuries to a number of protesters. Photos shared on social media showed how a vehicle belonging to opposition chief Jean Pierre Fabre was smashed.

The government had earlier warned the protesters against the plan. They said it was a violation of the terms included in a mediation effort led by President Akufo-Addo of Ghana. The said talks have hit a stalemate after the parties failed to agree on crucial issues after two rounds.

Anti-government sentiments have been on the rise in the West African country, one of the few that has no term limits for the president. Incumbent Faure Gnassingbe has been in charge since 2005.

He “inherited” a seat his father Gnassingbe Eyadema had occupied for 38 years till his death. He is in his third 5-year term which started in 2015 and is due to expire in 2020 when elections are next held.

Aside the main push for him to resign immediately, the opposition is also pushing for return of term limits, reforms to the electoral structure and the constitutional courts.

Source: Africa News

Opposition candidate Julius Maada Bio has won a narrow victory in a run-off election to become Sierra Leone’s next president, according to official results by the country’s electoral body.

The National Electoral Commission announced at 10:00pm local time that Maada Bio of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) won 51.8 percent of a total of over 2.5 million ballots cast in the March 31 vote, beating out the ruling All People’s Congress candidate Samura Kamara, who garnered 48.1 percent.

Kamara, a former foreign affairs minister, and Maada Bio, who briefly ruled Sierra Leone as head of a military junta in 1996, were vying to replace outgoing President Ernest Bai Koroma, who cannot seek re-election due to term limits.

I feel happy about the results. I am here because my president Julius Maada Bio has won the election in this country.

Maada Bio is to be sworn in as president tonight at a yet to be disclosed venue.

“The new president will be sworn in tonight,” Chief Justice Abdulai Hamid Charm told Reuters.

SLPP supporters began celebrating in the streets of the capital Freetown on Wednesday evening in anticipation of the official announcement of results.

“I feel happy about the results. I am here because my president Julius Maada Bio has won the election in this country,” said Adolfus Kargbo, among a group of SLPP supporters chanting Maada Bio’s name.

Who is Maada Bio?

Julius Maada Bio, 53, has tasted the presidency before having served a military Head of State for about three months. He led the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) military junta government that lasted from January 16 to March 29 1996.

He has also tasted how it feels to be on the ballot paper, he was the Sierra Leone Peoples Party’s candidate for the last elections. He lost to outgoing Ernest Bai Koroma.

As a military ruler, he toppled his boss in the NPRC junta Captain Valentine Strasser in January 1996 but handed over to democratically elected Ahmed Tejan Kabbah of the SLPPafter the 1996 presidential elections.

He later retired from active service that year and moved to the United States to further his studies. He earned a Masters Degree in International Affairs from the American University in Washington DC.

He was born on May 12, 1964 and graduated from military academy in October 1987 aged 23. He has played part in peacekeeping ops by the United Nations famously in Liberia. He played a role in the 1992 coup and led the 1996 one before handing over after elections.

He returned from the U.S. to join the SLPP in 2005. Contested to lead the party but lost the bid. He was picked as party’s presidential candidate in 2012 polls and garnered 37% of votes to place second.

He is a Roman Ctholic married to Fatima Bio a practicing Muslim and a Gambian national. They got married in an interfaith ceremony in London in 2013. The couple have a child but Maada Bio has three other children from a previous marriage. The vice presidential candidate of the SLPP is Jalloh Mohamed Juldeh.

The largely peaceful election process has come as a relief for the country of 7 million people, who endured a civil war in the 1990s and whose economy was dragged down by an Ebola epidemic in 2014-15 and a global slump in commodity prices in 2015.

Source: Africa News

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been re-elected with 97 percent of votes, the same proportion that the former military commander secured four years ago for his first term but with a lower turnout, official results showed on Monday.

Turnout was 41 percent, despite efforts to get as many Egyptians as possible to polling stations during last week’s vote. Sisi had been virtually guaranteed a landslide win, confirmed by early tallies as voting ended on Wednesday.

The election featured only one other candidate – himself an ardent Sisi supporter – after all serious opposition contenders halted their campaigns in January. The main challenger was arrested and his campaign manager beaten up, while other presidential hopefuls pulled out, citing intimidation.

“Every credible opponent was either threatened, harassed, prosecuted or detained,” said FRANCE 24 correspondent Sharif Abdel Kouddous.

The election commission said the vote was free and fair as it gave the results in a televised announcement on Monday.

Sisi won a total of 21.8 million votes compared with 656,534 for his opponent, Moussa Mostafa Moussa, whose tally was less than the 1.8 million spoiled ballots.

The lower turnout is a potential setback for Sisi, who suggested before the vote that he saw it as a referendum on his presidency rather than a genuine contest. Turnout in the 2014 vote that won him his first term was 47 percent.

“This came despite a very fierce campaign by officials to boost turnout,” said Kouddous. “You had officials using a mixture of cajoling and threatening and bullying to get people to the polls. In some provinces, you had police officers going door to door, instructing people to go to the polls. You had boxes of subsidised food with things like cooking oil and sugar being offered in poor areas for people to vote.”

Some voters said they were offered incentives to cast their ballots including money and food, local and international media reported, but did not say who had made the offers.

Officials said that if any such incidents took place they were not state-sponsored and extremely limited.

State media had portrayed failure to vote as a betrayal of Egypt.

“This wasn’t about voter attitudes or voter choices,” Kouddous said. “This was about the optics of their participation. It was really about political domination and … a fierce repression of civilian politics.”

Criticism

Critics say former general Sisi’s popularity has been eroded amid tough economic reforms, which have left most Egyptians worse off, and also an unprecedented crackdown on dissent.

His supporters say those measures are needed to stabilise the country, which faces a stubborn Islamic State group insurgency in the northern Sinai Peninsula and which was rocked by unrest after a 2011 uprising that ousted veteran leader Hosni Mubarak.

Sisi led the 2013 military overthrow of Egypt’s first freely elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, after protests against Morsi. Sisi swept to victory in an election a year later with 97 percent of the vote.

The United Nations expressed concern over the crackdown on dissent, including media, which took place before last week’s vote.

Sisi’s main Western and regional allies have been mostly silent over alleged human rights abuses in Egypt.

During voting last week, the US embassy in Cairo said on Twitter it was “impressed by the enthusiasm and patriotism of Egyptian voters”.

Russia congratulated Sisi on his election win ahead of the official results, and regional ally King Salman of Saudi Arabia called Sisi on Monday to express support, saying his victory came as a result of strong efforts to combat terrorism.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS)

Botswana’s new president, Mokgweetsi Masisi, used his inauguration speech on Sunday to vow to tackle youth unemployment in one of Africa’s most stable countries.

As the vice president, Masisi took over automatically, and he is likely to secure a further five-year term in elections in October 2019 when the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) is expected to hold on to power.

Botswana prides itself on good governance and rule of law, and the carefully managed handover of power comes a full 18 months ahead of parliamentary elections in 2019.

Masisi, the former vice president, takes over a country widely seen as an African success story that has made good use of its lucrative income from diamond, beef and tourism.

It is rated as the least corrupt country in Africa by Transparency International.

But it has also struggled with rising unemployment rate of about 18 percent and an HIV epidemic.

“It is because of the peace and tranquillity that our leaders have sustained for so long that Batswana (people) have continued to enjoy relative prosperity,” Masisi said after taking his oath.

“One of my top priorities as the president of this country will be to address the problem of unemployment especially amongst the young people.”

He also pledged to improve treatment and prevention of HIV in a country with a 22 percent infection rate among adults.

Continuity politics

President Masisi, 55, is a close ally of Khama and a BDP veteran.

He is a US-educated former teacher, UNICEF official and education minister, whose father was also a cabinet minister.

“Despite its small size, Botswana continues to play an important role in the promotion of global issues such as respect for human rights, democracy, good governance (and) the rule of law,” Masisi said.

Khama, 65, completed a months-long national farewell tour last week, bidding goodbye to the country’s population of 2.2 million.

He earned a record for straight talking, often criticising leaders including US President Donald Trump and   unlike many in the region   neighbouring Zimbabwe’s then-president Robert Mugabe as well as Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila.

Khama led the BDP to landslide victories in two elections, although the party won less than 50 percent of the vote for the first time in 2014.

“Internationally, Khama positioned himself as a moral leader,” Matteo Vidiri, a BMI Research analyst, told AFP.

“(But) a slowing economy and increasing public discontent has damaged the narrative of Botswana’s ‘special character’, of a country being able to escape the ‘resource curse’.”

Four opposition parties have said they could unite for the 2019 election to try to unseat the BDP, which has held power since independence from Britain in 1966.

At a farewell event in his home village, Khama was showered with gifts including a 4×4 truck, 143 cows, hundreds of chickens, more than 415,000 pula ($44,000, 35,000 euro) and a fully-equipped luxury caravan.

His father, Seretse Khama, served from 1966 to 1980 as Botswana’s first president.

(AFP)

Sierra Leone’s electoral staff prepared polling stations in Freetown early on Saturday morning as voters queued for a presidential run-off which was delayed by claims of electoral fraud.

“I am here to vote for the process. I am here, again, so I can have a credible election and credible results that is why I am here to come and vote,” said Idris Kamara, a voter in Freetown, as electoral staff put up polling station signs and prepared the ballot boxes.

The run-off is between the main opposition leader Julius Madaa Bio of the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) and Samura Kamara of the ruling All Peoples Congress (APC) party.

Bio led with 43.3 percent in the first round of the vote with runner-up Kamara taking 42.7 percent.

(Source: Reuters)

The policy of burning commercial bikes in villages and banning same in towns and enclave communities is clearly a very primitive and hopeless approach to restore peace and security. For one thing, it provokes anger and a thirst for vengeance in young people in restive areas in Southern Cameroons. By stopping the circulation commercial bikes and setting dozens of such bikes ablaze, the government has put out of business, tens of thousands of young people, many of them university graduates who depend on motor bikes popularly known as “Bend Skin” or “Okadas” as their only means of livelihood. Their families and dependants cannot have good meals and will not be able to pay various bills because their only providers have been artificially incapacitated.

While Divisional Officers (DO), Senior Divisional Officers (SDO) and regional governors west of the Mongo had repeatedly banned motorbikes and ordered night time curfews, the problems they have attempted to solve have not gone away. Rather, their actions have unfortunately created more difficulties and untold hardship for the populations. These actions have also gone a long way in radicalizing even the most moderate minds and pushed young people to invent other ways of hurting the government they so much detest. While, the population and critics have been vocal against the slash and burn strategy of the authorities, the new minister of territorial administration, Paul Atanga Nji, has not made things any better for the restive populations and communities. His first stamp as minister of interior on his own people was the banning of bikes in the main commercial towns of Kumba, Muyuka and other localities in the South West Region.

How insensitive could the new MINAT boss be? How could he place a complete ban on such a huge population and expect the sprawling and volatile city of Kumba to respect the rather punitive order? How could the minister go so low as to ignore the governors, SDO and DOs to ban bikes? What then is the role of the local administrators? His decision has been counterproductive in Kumba and this is having a huge impact on his reputation and authority. Could he risk a mass protest and the chain effect it could have if the “K” Town Boys descend on the streets to protest against any eventual enforcement of the ban? Paul Atanga’s style is reminiscent of the vicious and pitiless reign of terror that Cameroonians knew under Forchive, the then secret police boss of Bamoun extraction (under Amadou Ahijo and Paul Biya, ) who Cameroonians hate to remember. Forchive’s extremely repressive tactics of caging dissidents is a monolithic hang over which Paul Atanga Nji appears unable to shake off. By compelling governors and other administrators to feed him with security reports twice a day, it smacks of a police state of the past whereby innocent citizens were victimized, just to satisfy the bosses and prove that they were working hard to weed out enemies of the state or terrorists and preserve the security of the state.

BOOMERANG

Apart from the disgrace inflicted on MINAT by the daring Kumba bike riders, the overwhelming use of force to control movements has given birth to yet another extreme weapon against the government. A campaign to stop state-owned vehicles from plying the roads of Southern Cameroons is now being fanned. This is a first volley the Southern Cameroons pro-restoration campaigners have fired against the Atanga Nji rule. French language daily, Le Messager, vividly captured it well when it said that the Atanga Nji Paul formula could be greatly problematic.

Look back into East Cameroun history and you can easily see how francophone, especially in the Bamileke and Bassa areas, suffered the same atrocities that some Southern Cameroonian villages are currently experiencing. At the time, French soldiers led a bloody campaign against UPC nationalists who were branded as Terrorists or Marquisards. Villages were razed and heads were chopped off and displayed at road junctions to scare people and deter them from joining the revolution against the brutal French rule. Apparently, those ruling this country have forgotten their Cameroon history lessons and are bent on pursuing their “slash and burn” policy to the end. We say it is wrong. It is a wrong strategy to start eating up your own children. The ego of those in power cannot be too big to let go peace and justice. Dialogue, genuine dialogue is the right way to go. Various relevant organizations have echoed this as the right formula to restore lasting peace in the country. They include the UN, Commonwealth, AU, Amnesty International, International Crisis Group etc. But despite this crucial advice, President Paul Biya has remained faithful to his initial position that there will be no discussion on the form of the state. Those championing the crusade for good governance and autonomous rule for Southern Cameroons have been branded as terrorists. They are being hunted down, chased into exile and moderates are being pushed into extremism by the high handedness of administrative and military officials.

It has not been long since President Paul Biya declared war in his country. In effect, this is war on his people. The war is claiming lives and draining the country’s resources, and the end is not in sight. How the government intends to win such a war without the support if the population is what history is waiting to record as the world’s first. The same world history has shown repeatedly that after all the fighting, hatred, killings and excesses would have taken place, the warring parties will inevitably end up at the negotiating table. So why not just go to the negotiating table now and talk instead of the crazy decisions that are being taken on a daily basis?

By Sesekou Ashu Isong

Zimbabwe’s first presidential and parliamentary elections since the end of former strongman Robert Mugabe’s long rule will take place in July, President Emmerson Mnangagwa said on Saturday.

The polls will be the first major test of the new leader, who took power in November after a de facto military coup forced the 94-year-old Mugabe to resign.

They will also be the first without Mugabe’s name on the ballot since independence from Britain in 1980.

“As a nation, party and government, we are looking forward to very peaceful, transparent and harmonized elections in July this year,” Mnangagwa told reporters after a meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Saturday night.

Mnangagwa, 75, said the elections would be free of the violence that gripped previous polls and which was one of the reasons for strained relations between Zimbabwe and the West.

“I have already invited all political parties in Zimbabwe to a roundtable where we all commit ourselves to non-violence,” he added.

Mnanaggwa will have to announce a date in an official notice. He has said he would invite Western observers, who had been banned under Mugabe’s rule.

The state-owned weekly Sunday Mail said a European Union pre-election team was expected in Harare on Monday.

The EU head of mission in Zimbabwe, Phillipe Van Damme, told the paper it would meet the president, political party leaders, and the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.

Mugabe, in his first comments since he stepped down, said last week that Mnangagwa’s rule was “illegitimate” and a “disgrace”.

(Source: Reuters)