ANC offers to help Zanu-PF regain lost ground ahead of elections

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe expressed confidence Thursday that his party can win proposed elections, saying there was no need for coercive campaigning or political violence because voters support his party's "progressive" economic ideas. SA's ruling ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe has offered to help Zanu-PF regain lost ground ahead of watershed elections expected next year or in 2013.

The Zanu PF leader, 87, said elections are needed to end a fragile 30-month coalition with the former opposition ' a partnership he described as an impractical "patch on torn trousers."

"We're saying time has come now to prepare for elections. We just have to have elections next year," Mugabe told delegates to his Zanu PF party's national conference in Bulawayo a speech that lasted more than two hours.

"Let's go to an election so people can choose a government of their liking."

Mugabe criticised Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's party. He said it was "busy chasing women," a reference to widower Tsvangirai's break-up with a commodity broker who claimed he had made her pregnant.

"We think of our people ... we are busy taking care of our country," Mugabe said.

He also also called for an end to violence saying there was no need for coercive poll campaigning or political violence because voters supported his party's "progressive ideas" to economically empower ordinary Zimbabweans.

"We in Zanu-PF must renounce violence, reject it," he said.

Meanwhile, SA's ruling ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe has offered to help Zanu-PF regain lost ground ahead of watershed elections expected next year or in 2013.

He offered President Mugabe to teach the Zanu-PF youths how to campaign and win peacefully without using violence.

Mantashe promised to send a team of strategists to assist Zanu-PF come up with an effective campaign strategy that would ensure victory for President Mugabe.