'Being 90 is illness on its own' - Biti attacks ailing Mugabe

HARARE - Former Finance Minister, Tendai Biti, on Thursday launched a blistering attack on President Robert Mugabe (89) warning that his age, failing health and the attendant economic crisis risked creating conditions for a coup.

Biti was addressing a panel discussion on the Zanu PF government's new ZimAsset economic blueprint held at a Harare hotel.

"We are paralysed by a crisis of leadership; that you can have the chief executive officer of the country at 90. I know that there has been debate about the president's health but in my respectful submission, being 90 is illness on its own," Biti said to much laughter in the packed hotel.

"This is a government that is founded on vicious circles of exclusion, slogans of hatred, slogans of attrition personified in the head of state.

"The man goes to the United Nations, the man goes, 'shame, shame, shame, shame, shame'. You go to the Heroes' Acre, when you read the speech, you just wonder who has been the target of this speech."

"You have got a new minister of finance. Everyone is under attack, John Robertson, even poor Makandiwa, bankers and so forth. The biggest problem with Zanu PF is that they don't understand money and the economy. They are functionally illiterate. They think that money grows on trees," Biti said.

"People just believe in spending, spending, spending. It's like a broiler chicken. The broiler just eats. It doesn't know why it's eating. It eats itself to death. It's consumption for the sake of consumption. It's oblivious of where the food is coming from. It just eats 24 hours a day. So they have got a broiler chicken syndrome, they are oblivious kuti mari inobva kupi."

"Those of you who have studied coups on the African continent you will find one common thing that is evident in those coups. Number one, there would be no leadership. It doesn't mean there is no head of State at the state palace.

"He would be there but he is dead. He can't offer directions to the economic problems that are affecting the country. He is indifferent. It's almost like he is living in another country and reading about our problems on Facebook. If you have that, you have got a challenge. We have that in Zimbabwe.

"Number two - coups will occur where there is exclusion, where particular people, person, tribes or whatever feel that democratic processes are no longer working and tirikudzvinyirirwa so we have no choice but to resort to undemocratic processes.

"Thirdly where coups occur, the economy is not functioning. So we have the ingredients of serious social dislocation in this country."