'Infighting destroying Zanu-PF,' says Mugabe

President Robert Mugabe told veterans of the country's 1970's liberation war that infighting could destroy his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party.

"There's unprecedented jostling in the party," Mugabe, 90, said in the capital Harare today ahead of his party's five-year congress.

"We're experiencing it for the first time and for that matter it is a woman who is saying she wants to take over."

Zanu-PF has been wracked by division after Mugabe's wife, Grace, accused Vice President Joice Mujuru of corruption and treason, charges Mujuru denies. Mujuru and her senior allies in the party were routed last week when provincial elections saw them ousted from the party's central committee. The move bars Mujuru from continuing as the party's No. 2 unless she is appointed by Mugabe.

"We know that infiltration has been going on," said Mugabe.

"They were saying that they'd work with the Movement for Democratic Change, with Britain and America," he said referring to the main opposition party.

"That's simplistic thinking, you can't trust the white," he said.