[This is funny. Tony Leon is a Jewish Liberal. He’s never been racist in his life. But Mugabe’s rotten old crowd brand him as one… Jan]

HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwe on Monday dismissed a plan by South Africa’s main opposition party to visit the country on a pre-election fact-finding mission as a racist attempt to gain international attention.

South Africa’s Democratic Alliance (DA), a traditionally white party led by lawyer Tony Leon, said on Sunday it would send a team to Zimbabwe to investigate the minimum conditions required to ensure fair parliamentary elections there.

The DA said ZANU-PF had made a fair election in March “almost impossible” because it used food supplies as a political weapon, intimidated voters, persecuted the opposition, restricted the media and controlled the voting process.

In comments to Reuters, Mugabe’s spokesman George Charamba scoffed at the proposed visit by the opposition delegation from key ally South Africa.

“Tony Leon coming here? What do we need racists for? We ousted them a long time ago and they have no constituency here,” he said.

The polls, scheduled for March 31, pit Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF against the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

But the opposition says limited reforms favour Mugabe’s party and political analysts say the elections are almost certain to return ZANU-PF to power, prolonging a political and economic crisis that has ruined the once prosperous southern African country.

Mugabe’s government has long categorised the MDC, led by former trade union leader Morgan Tsvangirai, as being a puppet of white and Western interests seeking revenge for the state-sponsored seizure of white-owned farms for landless black Zimbabweans.

Asked what Zimbabwe would do if the DA pressed on with the trip, Charamba said: “They won’t come, they cannot come. This is all a side show meant to attract international attention.”

“We would rather they invite the MDC, their partners, to go to South Africa,” he added.

Last week the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), an ally of the ruling African National Congress, embarked on a similar trip to Zimbabwe but were denied entry by Harare, which said they were visitors with a hostile agenda.

They say Mugabe has failed to deliver on international demands for wide-ranging democratic electoral reforms, and has compounded the Zimbabwe crisis with a set of cosmetic measures designed to keep his ZANU-PF party in power.

Mugabe, 81 this month and in power since independence from Britain in 1980, denies charges that he rigged Zimbabwe’s last two general elections and also that he has mismanaged the country over the last 25 years.

The veteran leader says the opposition MDC is a front for his Western opponents who want to push him from power, and have undermined Zimbabwe’s economy as pay-back for land seizures.

Source: Reuters
URL: http://www.reuters.co.za/locales/c_newsArticl…/p>