‘This Country Is In Crisis’

Zimbabwe's most recent presidential polls have been marred by controversies over corruption and vote rigging. It's upcoming ballot, on March 29, is unlikely to be any different. The southern African nation's dictatorial leader, 84-year-old Robert Mugabe, faces two challengers. The first is Morgan Tsvangirai, a longtime labor-union activist, has stood against Mugabe in the past and lost. The second, Simba Makoni, emerged only recently from within Mugabe's own ZANU-PF party apparatus, and his candidacy has energized those who considered Mugabe unassailable. Makoni, a former finance minister and senior party apparatchik, now stands poised to give one of the continent's longest-standing strongmen a run for his money. Makoni spoke to NEWSWEK's Scott Johnson recently in the presidential suite of the Rainbow Hotel, in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: Why are you running?
Simba Makoni: Our country needs new leadership, we need another direction.

When did you decide to enter the race?
The trigger was the failure of the party congress on Dec. 15 to solve the leadership question. The congress was convened to endorse one candidate [Mugabe] instead of electing one.

What was the mood at the time?
It's irrelevant now. But my colleagues were frustrated, they were angry, they were anxious. All of them agreed that change was overdue for the party and for the country. Everybody was convinced that we almost lost the elections in 2002 because of the leadership question.

Explain what is wrong with the leadership.
The current leadership is stuck in the past. Their reference points are the liberation struggle and colonialism, but this country is in crisis--in many crises. History is important, but it must give way to the future. We have to deal with people's problems--food, water, electricity, the fragmentation of society, the breakdown of families, the breakdown of respect for the rule of law. Even something as simple as people not obeying traffic signals. The social fabric has disintegrated. There's a tremendous manipulation of natural resources. Our leadership has no feeling for the people. We are preoccupied with staying in power. We don't look at the suffering. The state has to serve the people, not the people the state.

What about corruption?
People are corrupt. Even Mugabe has spoken publicly about people in his inner circle, people in the leadership who are corrupt, but he doesn't do anything about it.

Isn't the responsibility as much with ZANU, your party, as with Mugabe?
The problem is not a lack of policy. There was a U.N. report which found that Zimbabwe ranked [in the] 95th percentile in policy formulation and [in the] fourth percentile in policy implementation, so we have to energize policy implementation.