An example was the alleged letter sent by Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai to President Thabo Mbeki last month calling on Mbeki to withdraw from the mediation as he was biased and ineffective.
Frank Chikane, director-general in the Presidency, denied that the letter had been received and that any receipt had been issued for it, as claimed in some newspapers.
The logical conclusion is that there is no such letter.
The mystery of the letter deepened last night when the MDC itself denied that Tsvangirai had written to Mbeki.
We are uncertain of the provenance of the letter, Tsvangirai’s spokesman, George Sibotshiwe, said. There have been no recent communications between the MDC and President Thabo Mbeki.
Chikane told a parliamentary media briefing that since the start of the Zimbabwean facilitation process, the Presidency and the government had had to correct numerous fabrications that have been industriously fed to an otherwise vigilant media. The fabrications were not innocent but intended to further particular interests.
The timing of such false reports coincided with critical moments in the peace facilitation work led by Mbeki.
What is clear is that these fabrications are focusing on demonisation of the facilitation process, with the intention to prevent the possibility for a solution in Zimbabwe.
On several occasions the denials and corrections of the Presidency had been ignored until the allegations took on the aura of fact. Chikane said similar events occurred during the negotiations for SA’s political transition in the early 1990s.
Another example was a report Mbeki was allegedly due to submit to a Southern African Development Community heads of state summit in Lusaka in August . Chikane said the Presidency was not aware of any such report. If one existed, it was not authored by the government.
Chikane’s comments follow those made last month by Mbeki after an International Investment Council meeting when he said he suspected some people were carrying out a sustained campaign to peddle falsehoods against him. With Bloomberg
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