ZANU PF, MDC resume talks in Pretoria

Nelson Chamisa, the spokesman for the Morgan Tsvangirai-led Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party, told about 5 000 party supporters at a rally in Harare’s Glen View suburb that the party’s negotiators left Harare for Pretoria last Saturday for the make-or-break talks. Welshman Ncube and Tendai Biti, the secretaries-general of the two factions of the MDC are representing the party in talks with ZANU PF. Chamisa said Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa and Social Welfare Minister Nicholas Goche, who are leading the ZANU PF delegation, also left for Pretoria for the talks that have been deadlocked over ZANU PF’s rejection of a new constitution before the elections scheduled for March. The dialogue is resuming. Our negotiators are in South Africa right now after President Thabo Mbeki stepped in to break the deadlock, said Chamisa. Mbeki has called the negotiating teams to try and break the deadlock. The MDC is still insisting on a transitional constitution as well as the shifting of the election date, he added. The MDC said it wants a new, democratic constitution that has been agreed at the talks to be implemented before the elections. It also wants the election date moved from March to sometime in June to allow democratic reforms and other legal changes agreed to at the talks to have effect on the ground before voting could take place. Mugabe has however rejected the opposition demands insisting that the elections will take place in March without fail. Speaking at the same rally yesterday, MDC vice-president Thokozani Khupe said the opposition party was also pushing for every Zimbabwean eligible to vote to be allowed to vote using their national identification card as happened during the historic 1980 elections that ushered in independence. We are campaigning for an environment that is conducive for free and fair elections. We want a situation whereby any eligible Zimbabwean would be allowed to vote using his or her national ID card, said Khupe. The MDC, ZANU PF talks have the blessings of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) that is eager to broker a lasting solution to Zimbabwe’s eight-year political crisis. A key objective of the talks is to ensure that the presidential and parliamentary elections are free and fair. Analysts say truly democratic elections are vital to any plan to end an acute economic crisis gripping Zimbabwe and that is seen in hyperinflation, a rapidly contracting GDP, the fastest for a country not at war according to the World Bank and shortages of foreign currency, food and fuel. – ZimOnline