President Robert Mugabe, 93, told supporters of his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party that he’s in good health and not ready to retire.
Speaking to party supporters in Chinhoyi, about 72 miles northwest of the capital, Harare, Mugabe said he would choose a successor when he felt he had found one capable of maintaining the party’s dominance over the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party.
”A new man will be put to the test by the MDC, so I want to assess that the situation is ripe,” he said.
Zimbabweans will vote in parliamentary and presidential elections in 2018, though no date has been set. Mugabe is the ruling party’s presidential candidate. He’s led the southern African nation as prime minister and then president since independence from the white-minority regime of Rhodesia in 1980. A win next year would herald his final term of office under a 2013 constitution agreed to by Zanu-PF and MDC.
Mugabe has traveled to Singapore three times in the last seven months for undisclosed medical reasons, according to the state-controlled media.