Zimbabwe’s veteran President Robert Mugabe called yesterday for elections next year for a new government to replace the power-sharing pact created after 2008 polls that led to deadly violence.

“We are saying time has come now to prepare to have elections. We just have to have elections next year,” the 87-year-old who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980 told a conference of his ruling Zanu-PF in the second city Bulawayo.

Zanu-PF has already endorsed Mr Mugabe as its candidate for the next elections. No date has been set.

Mr Mugabe had pushed for elections in 2011, but in a sign of his more limited power under the unity accord, his main rival and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai who leads the Movement for Democratic Change, rebuffed his demands, with regional backing.

The unity deal calls for a new constitution to be approved by referendum, a process running more than a year behind schedule with no firm indication of when it will be complete.

Mr Mugabe said the unity government formed after political negotiations among the three main political parties had “overstayed its welcome.”

“Our country does not have an elected government,” he said. “I am president to a political arrangement which is makeshift, undemocratic and illegitimate.”

Mr Mugabe told supporters his government will not reverse its indigenisation policy, which compels all foreign-owned firms to cede 51 per cent of ownership to local blacks.

“We will not reverse this policy,” he said. “For years now, even before I was born after this country was colonised, our resources, mining resources have been disappearing.”

“Sure we want partners, sure we want technology, but let the majority of the companies be our companies in total,” he added.