Mugabe, Tsvangirai register to run in Zimbabwe elections

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe and long-time rival Morgan Tsvangirai registered on Friday for elections scheduled for July 31 in which Mugabe is seeking to extend his three-decade rule.
The 89-year-old leader will fight Tsvangirai, 61, for the presidency, while his ZANUPF party faces Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the parliamentary election after four years in a forced coalition following a disputed 2008 vote.


Welshman Ncube, who leads a splinter MDC party, also entered the presidential race, but the serious contenders are Mugabe and Tsvangirai, a former fiery trade union leader who says the president has rigged elections since 2000 to shut him out.
“As ZANU-PF we are confident of victory. We are supporting our president because we have progressive policies,” Defense Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa told Reuters after registering Mugabe’s candidature at the High Court. In power since the former Rhodesia’s independence from Britain in 1980, Mugabe left Harare for a medical check-up in Singapore on Tuesday.

Tsvangirai is already on the campaign trail in Zimbabwe’s southwestern Matabeleland region. Mugabe, Africa’s oldest leader, denies reports he suffers from prostate cancer or other major health problems. He says he has cataracts and is expected home this weekend from what his spokesman called a routine visit to an eye specialist.