'Mugabe can't be trusted to lead Zimbabwe,' says Mawere

South African based business tycoon Mutumwa Mawere says President Robert Mugabe cannot be trusted to lead Zimbabwe for the next five years.

"Don't trust anybody, people trusted president Mugabe and today they are poor," he told a news conference at the Meikles Hotel on Friday.

He said Mugabe did not have a clue of what is happening in Zimbabwe as he is trying to recycle bad ideas.

"His world views are wrong, that I can take shares from here and there, then you become okay, if the views are wrong they don't require age. You can't recycle bad ideas and hope they will become good ideas," Mawere said.

He said Mugabe continued to abuse the State media in a bid to hide his short-comings.

"Because he controls the State, he gets coverage visibility. Everything that he says is reported and everything that anyone says is reported negatively, that is the tendency," he said.

"Incumbents are very difficult to fight, not because they have support but because people don't know the truth. People are gullible because we don't know the other side of the truth."

Mawere, who recently regained his citizenship after a protracted legal battle at the Constitutional Court, said people needed to fight for their voting right, so as to determine their future.

"I am going to vote because I am now eligible, I took my passport today, and people who need change must work for it," he said.

"With citizenship comes the obligation, a right to vote, to make sure I don't blame other people for their choice. After the election, it will be too late to say why president Robert Mugabe became a president when I had a right to stop it."

He said he had to mount a test case to ascertain the country's citizenship laws for the benefit of future generations.

"By testing the right of citizenship on me, now you understand what the citizenship laws are, will would have never known that. I had to go to the Con-Court to establish that I am a Zimbabwean. Active citizenship gives outcome, if you're not active you get the leadership you deserve and if you're silent, you will not get a better outcome and history has defined that. I was fighting to assert the right to citizenship," Mawere said.

"That is why I went to court because the Constitution said we want people like you to be citizens then here I am, I go to (Registrar General Tobaiwa) Mudede and he says no, you can't get a passport, an ID but because we're nation of law, here is the Zimbabwean passport. And we're making what?

"The Constitution to have a meaning, I would have expected people like president Mugabe to say no, Mudede don't do that, we have this new Constitution amendment number 20, how can you stop Mawere, if he wants to register he's just one vote, why are you afraid of him?"

Reaffirming his support for Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's candidature in the July 31 watershed election, Mawere said Mugabe's bookish ways had failed to solve the country's problems.

"Right now the country is going down while you have a smart leader, you have president Mugabe with nice speeches, after all the nice speeches people are still hungry, so I don't have a president who is smart," Mawere said.

"I am just saying 33 years, if I had a magic plan I would have shown some signs of what?

Right now if you go to Dubai, people go to shop there, 33 years ago there was nothing, it was just camels."