President Emmerson Mnangagwa has accused opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) leader Nelson Chamisa of demanding dialogue through the media saying if he genuinely wants to talk he knows what to do.

In an interview with a Zanu PF aligned Third Eye, Mnangagwa said he will not reply to statements made in the press.

“He (Chamisa) goes to the press to want to talk to me, if you want to talk to me, come to me not the press. I will not reply to statements in the press. A solid leader knows what to do if you want to talk to a colleague.”

Turning to the use of the Zimbabwe dollar, President Mnangagwa said there was no turning back as using other countries’ currencies had crippled the economy before in the early 2000s.

He said the Government would put in place measures that would see increased confidence and strengthening of the local currency.

“The sanctions succeeded in destroying our Zimbabwean currency. You needed to carry $2 billion to buy bread, and that was not feasible so that’s when we abandoned our currency and allowed multiple currencies to apply and that stabilised our situation but there is no country that can develop without its own currency.

“So we’ve reached a stage where we must have our own currency that is under serious attack but we will never abandon it. What we might do is to legislate against foreign currency to make sure we use our own currency,” he said.

President Mnangagwa said the use of the Zimbabwe dollar as legal tender was irreversible adding that the country was not only politically independent but also economically independent.

“Our people must know that our currency is there to stay but foreign currencies of other countries are not there to stay. Initially, we got political independence in 1980 but thereafter 1990 we assumed full independence because the Lancaster constitution expired and we are independent both in terms of politics and our resources, no one gives us directions in terms of what we must do with our resources,” he said.