Mugabe set to make history after endorsement to extend his 36-year rule

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has been endorsed by the ruling ZANU-PF party to run in the country’s 2018 election.

The endorsement, decided at the party’s annual conference in the southeastern town of Masvingo on Saturday, is likely to result in the extension of his 36-year rule.

“The party expresses its support to the president and first secretary comrade Robert Mugabe as the sole candidate for the forthcoming 2018 elections,” deputy secretary Eunice Sandi Moyo said.

92-year-old Mugabe accepted the endorsement sparking a loud applause by thousands of supporters.

“We agreed that conflicts should end. Infighting should end. The party ideology should be followed,” he said, adding: “let us be one. We are one family, the family of ZANU-PF, bound together by the fact of understanding between its members.”

Mugabe has once said he will rule until he is 100 years old.