adminJohn Manzongo Herald Reporter
NAMIBIA Defence Forces Chief Lieutenant General Ephraim Ndaitwah has praised Zimbabweans for voting peacefully to elect leadership of their choice into office.
President Mugabe and Zanu-PF romped to a resounding victory after beating MDC-leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai and his party in the just-ended harmonised elections.
The Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces won 61,09 percent of the vote to Mr Tsvangirai’s 33,94 percent while Zanu-PF clinched 160 seats out of the 210 National Assembly constituencies to give the revolutionary party a crushing 76 percent dominance in the Lower House.
Speaking at the farewell dinner hosted for him by the Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces General Constantine Chiwenga at Army Headquarters in Harare on Friday, Lt Gen Ndaitwah said Zimbabweans were peace loving people.
“I have visited Zimbabwe several times but my visit this time was special in that I managed to attend the country’s Heroes and Defence Forces day celebrations,” said Lt Gen Ndaitwah.
“This is also the time that the country had just concluded holding of its harmonized elections.
“These elections were conducted by Zimbabweans and for Zimbabweans and in any race there are bound to be one winner which in this case was Zanu-PF who managed to claim a resounding victory.”
He said Zanu-PF made a great achievement through its landslide win, adding that this should be jealously guarded upon by all objective people.
“The Western countries are talking about regime change but their regime change in Africa is only targeting countries that won their freedom through the barrel of a gun.
“Freedom did not come on a silver platter and so our citizens need to be aware of such sinister motives,” he said.
“We were together in the trenches during the Democratic Republic of Congo war where we managed to retain a democratically elected government.
“Today we stand proud as we have managed to achieve a lot during the joint military training programmes,” he said.
Gen Chiwenga paid tribute to the Sadc region and progressive institutions for the positive reporting of harmonized elections.
“Allow me to commend the sub-regional, continental and world bodies such as Sadc, Comesa, AU, ACP and UN for their positive reports regarding the conduct of peaceful, fair and credible harmonised elections despite spirited efforts by Britain, America and their allies to portray them in a negative manner,” he said.
General Chiwenga said Zimbabwe and Namibia share a lot in common. “Indeed it is without doubt that interactions and visits at this high level signify the desire to further cement existing good relations between our two countries.
“General (Lt Gen Ndaitwah) our agreement on military co-operation signed in May 2003 has yielded a lot of results in the area of training but what remains outstanding is the area of joint training and field exercises at various levels,” said Gen Chiwenga.
“ZDF have always taken great comfort in our association with Namibia Defence Forces as our strategic partnerships continue to grow.”
Gen Chiwenga said the ZDF sent a training team to Namibia where the two forces took part in Exercise Desert Thunder.
Online Reporter