“Zimbabwe is an embarrassment”

Kenya Prime Minister Raila Odinga says the situation in Zimbabwe is an embarrassment to Africa and is urging urgent action on Zimbabwe by the African Union, reports Zimbabwe Metro.com.

He was speaking at news conference at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on arrival from South Africa.

He said he had also met former South African president Nelson Mandela and his wife Graca Machel and Zimbabwe’s MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Mrs Machel was part of the mediation team which helped to resolve the post-election crisis in the country.

It met Mr Tsvangirai. I just met him today, actually around five hours ago in South Africa, he said.

He said he advised Tsvangirai to participate in the run-off, but MDC was still considering it.

MDC contend that their candidate, Tsvangirai won the elections with 50.3 per cent of the vote and President Mugabe should hand over power.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) released official results last week, which showed Tsvangirai polling 47.9 per cent and President Mugabe taking 43.2 per cent.

The electoral body said a run-off between the two candidates was needed but it is to announce a date.

We are going to ask the African Union to be more proactive when dealing with this issue. The fact that elections can be held in an independent country and it takes more than a month for the results to be announced is sad. That is not really how you want to run a democracy. The rest of Africa is silent and this is not good for democracy. We must speak when an injustice is being done.

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