Zimbabwe’s top army general, reacting to suggestions by Western countries to send an international peacekeeping force to the country, said Thursday that his troops would fight off all such foreign forces. Gen. Constantine Chiwenga said that the plan, suggested by Britain and other powerful Western countries, were intended to topple President Robert Mugabe and replace him with a pliant leader. The Western countries made the suggestion late last year at the height of a cholera outbreak which was widely blamed on mismanagement by the government. But Chiwenga called the plan a disguised regime change which the army would fight off if implemented. “There are no questions about it and it shall not change. We fought and defeated them (white rule) in 1980 and what do they still want? We will not be slaves in our own country. This is our motherland,” he said. Although talk of a peacekeeping force has subsided, Zimbabwe’s political elite is still whipping nationalist passions against it.
