CHIEF CHIWARA SAYS, "WE DON'T MIND THE HARDSHIPS, THEY ARE TEMPORARY!"

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WE don’t mind the hardships we are currently facing in Zimbabwe because they are temporary, a Zimbabwean senior chief has said.

Chief Chiwara of Gutu District in Masvingo Province said in an interview on Tuesday that although many Zimbabweans were facing hardships, changing their leadership was not an option for them.The chief, who is attending the ongoing ZANU-PF extraordinary congress in Harare said he wished all the people in the country could vote for President Robert Mugabe.

“We’ll endorse our president to be the leader for the next term because he is fit and able to lead us. We don’t mind our current hardships because they are temporary. We are struggling but we are also fighting hard to redeem ourselves. Perseverance is the answer,” he said.“I wish all the people could vote for our President because he has fought for our rights for so long.

He’s the only president I’ve seen in Africa who has the love of his people at heart. He’s the only president who has done sense.”The chief said the land reform programme, which saw the 80 per cent of the arable land that was held by only four percent of the white community being redistributed to the landless black Zimbabweans, was the best thing to have happened in Zimbabwe.Chief Chiwara, who was flanked by Herikanos Mudavahvu, a headman in Masvingo Province, said he believed the “temporary problems inflicted on Zimbabweans by Western countries” would be over soon.

Asked what the end to the Zimbabwean crisis was dependant on, the chief said it would be through hard work and self-reliance and not through change of the incumbent regime.“Things will be normal very soon. We are very confident about that. Everything has got an end so we are not worried,” he said.“Our major intentions are to do away with the British government’s imperialism and to work hard so that our country can go back to what it was before.”

Branding former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, incumbent prime minister Gordon Brown and US president George Bush as “devils”, chief Chiwara said the former colonial power ought to do away with Zimbabwe’s internal affairs.“They should just leave us alone. Why are they so interested in our country when we have no interest in theirs?” he asked.

The on-going ZANU-PF extraordinary congress is expected to endorse President Robert Mugabe as the ruling party’s presidential candidate in the March 2008 elections.And if he wins the election, President Mugabe, 83, will continue to be the country’s president until the next elections in 2013.