{{Zimbabwe\u2019s First Lady, Grace Mugabe has vowed that President Robert Mugabe will not step down anytime soon as campaigns for the country\u2019s July 31 elections gained momentum.}}<\/p>\n
The 47 year-old former secretary of the 90 year-old leader has hit the campaign trail with her husband who is seeking to defy age and lend another five years in office.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to repeat what I said in 2008,\u201d Mrs Mugabe told a rally at a rural business centre about 80 kilometres from Harare on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said there is no vacancy at State House.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are there at State House full time and I know this because you have confidence in your leader and you want him to remain at State House.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2008, President Mugabe lost the first round of the presidential elections to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.<\/p>\n
The results of the elections were withheld for three weeks before a runoff poll was called.<\/p>\n
However, Mr Tsvangirai was forced to withdraw from the poll after suspected state security agents unleashed violence against his supporters.<\/p>\n
The international community rejected the results of the one man poll and this forced President Mugabe to form a coalition with his former arch rival.<\/p>\n
NMG<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Zimbabwe\u2019s First Lady, Grace Mugabe has vowed that President Robert Mugabe will not step down anytime soon as campaigns for the country\u2019s July 31 elections gained momentum.}} The 47 year-old former secretary of the 90 year-old leader has hit the campaign trail with her husband who is seeking to defy age and lend another five […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-9036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9036\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9036"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=9036"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=9036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}