Former Zanu PF youth leader Acie Lumumba has launched his own party and has ruled out forging ties with existing parties, saying they have nothing to offer.
In an interview with the Daily News, Lumumba said his party, called Viva Zimbabwe, is aiming to garner support of youths, who constitute 60 percent of registered voters.
The 27-year-old politician, who had a public fallout with Youth minister Patrick Zhuwao, said the important thing is not about age but bringing fresh ideas that will extricate Zimbabwe from the economic abyss it has been placed into by Zanu PF.
“All the current parties have nothing to offer my generation.
“The whole country is talking about the future that is in the hands of political parties stuck in the past. I am the only game changer on the scene right now. My party belongs to young people,” Lumumba said.
But at 27, Lumumba might have jumped the gun considering that under the current Constitution, to qualify as an aspirant to be president, a person must be a citizen of Zimbabwe by birth or descent, have attained the age of 40 years, and be ordinarily resident in Zimbabwe.
However, Lumumba, who launches his party tomorrow, said “age is just a number” that cannot stop an idea whose time has come.
“If people say that I am too young, then why not go ahead and give Mugabe another term?
“Age is not the issue, neither is the personality. It is an old culture of politics to talk about who runs the country instead of what they want to do with it.
“Zimbabweans are not looking for a president, they are looking for vision and a plan, which is what Viva Zimbabwe brings, a vision of a Zimbabwe fit for all who live in it and a plan to give you back your country,” Lumumba said.
Once an ardent disciple of Zanu PF’s controversial policies, such as the Indigenisation Act, Lumumba has joined the treacherous opposition politics, hitherto dominated by veteran opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and former Vice President Joice Mujuru.
And at a time when Mugabe’s government is failing to pay its workers, and service an ever ballooning external debt, the losing candidate for Hatfield constituency said he has solutions to the myriad challenges besetting the country.
“Look at the queues at the banks, next its queues at the fuel pumps, then queues in the supermarkets; we cannot reward Zanu PF for this.
“People already know who not to vote for in 2018, what we are doing is giving them who to vote for instead, because the alternatives are non-contenders,” Lumumba said. Daily News
