{"id":8496,"date":"2013-08-05T10:31:55","date_gmt":"2013-08-05T10:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=8496"},"modified":"2013-08-05T10:32:47","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T10:32:47","slug":"zim-refugees-positive-about-mugabe-re-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=8496","title":{"rendered":"Zim refugees positive about Mugabe re-election"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"methodist\"<\/a>A Methodist church in central Johannesburg has become home to more than 800 Zimbabweans who fled their country following the 2008 elections.<\/p>\n

Reactions were mostly positive at the weekend when results showed a resounding victory for Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF.<\/p>\n

Election officials confirmed on Saturday evening the landslide win for Mugabe which gave Africa’s oldest president five more years at the helm of a nation he has ruled for 33.<\/p>\n

Mugabe’s rival, Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader and prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who has now lost to the president for the third election running, has disputed the election.<\/p>\n

He said he will challenge the results in court with evidence of massive vote-rigging, irregularities and intimidation.<\/p>\n

A Zimbabwean staying at the church, 69-year-old Mma Phiri, said she left the country 6 years ago and said she was confident Mugabe would stabilise the country.<\/p>\n

Zimbabwe is struggling to recover from a decade of slump and hyperinflation that ended in 2009 when the Zimbabwean dollar was scrapped.<\/p>\n

Mugabe campaigned on a platform of redistributing the country’s wealth by taking at least 51% shares in foreign-owned firms to hand them over to black Zimbabweans.<\/p>\n

The economy had started to stabilise after Mugabe formed a unity government in 2009 with Tsvangirai to end a stand-off over another contested election, halting a decade of recession marked by hyper-inflation and chronic shortages of food and foreign currency.<\/p>\n

Those hardships are still fresh in the minds of Zimbabweans, who endured long queues for everything from bread to fuel and cash and are wary of ZANU-PF’s poor track record on the economy.<\/p>\n

“I am so happy because my country will become what it used to be in the 80s,” said Phiri. “MDC is only a matter of spreading rumours about Zimbabwe to the west,” said a Zimbabwean college graduate, Denis Sithole, who also stays at the church.<\/p>\n

Mugabe, one of the grand old men of southern Africa’s liberation fight that ended white minority rule, is admired as a defiant nationalist by some Africans, though others share the West’s view of him as a ruthless despot who wrecked Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n

He had defiantly ignored a request by Southern African Development Community in June to delay the election beyond July 31 to allow more time for steps to create a “conducive environment” for a free and fair vote. – SABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Methodist church in central Johannesburg has become home to more than 800 Zimbabweans who fled their country following the 2008 elections. Reactions were mostly positive at the weekend when results showed a resounding victory for Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF. Election officials confirmed on Saturday evening the landslide win for Mugabe which … Continue reading “Zim refugees positive about Mugabe re-election”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[4738,239,181,4739],"class_list":["post-8496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-central-methodist-church","tag-johannesburg","tag-zanu-pf","tag-zimbabwean-refugees"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/methodist.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8496"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8499,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8496\/revisions\/8499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}