Campaigning for the 2008 Zimbabwean presidential election Campaigning for the 2008 Zimbabwean presidential election Campaigning for the first round of the presidential election held in Zimbabwe on 29 March 2008 took place from February to March. There were three major candidates: President Robert Mugabe of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), Morgan Tsvangirai of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC, Tsvangirai faction), and the independent candidate Simba Makoni. Mugabe declared on 12 February that he was "raring to go and raring to fly". Speaking at a rally in Beitbridge on 23 February, he likened Makoni to "a frog trying to inflate itself
LGBT rights in Zimbabwe Church in the 1980s and 90s, arguing that homosexuality is a sin and practising homosexuals could never be accepted into the church. His successor as bishop, Nolbert Kunonga, accused Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams of "heresy", and suggested he was "coming to lobby for homosexuality". Zimbabwe does not recognise same-sex marriage or civil unions. In 2013, the Zimbabwe Constitution was amended to define marriage as being between a man and a woman. President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe, from 1980 to 2017, has actively carried out actions against LGBT people and spoken out in public against homosexuality. Mugabe received worldwide criticism